Understanding the FBLA Web Design Event

Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) Web Design is one of the most challenging and rewarding competitive events for high school students passionate about digital design and development. Teams of up to three students build a website based on a prescribed prompt, then present and defend their work to judges. The competition tests creativity, technical skill, teamwork, business acumen, and presentation ability — all within a strict timeline and rubric.

As a full-service digital marketing and web development company, AAMAX.CO has mentored aspiring developers and designers for years. In this guide, we share the strategies, technical approaches, and mindset shifts that help FBLA Web Design teams deliver winning projects.

Mastering the Rubric

Most FBLA Web Design teams lose points not because their work is bad, but because they fail to align tightly with the scoring rubric. Before writing a single line of code, print the rubric, highlight every criterion, and assign each team member specific responsibilities for each section. Treat the rubric as a checklist you reference daily.

Typical criteria include topic relevance, design creativity, usability, accessibility, content quality, technical implementation, mobile responsiveness, and presentation delivery. Each of these deserves intentional effort.

Choosing a Tech Stack That Matches Your Timeline

FBLA teams have limited build time, so pick a stack your team already knows or can learn quickly. Options include:

Hand-coded HTML/CSS/JavaScript: Maximum control, demonstrates fundamentals, but requires more time for complex features.

Static-site generators like Astro or Eleventy: Fast, SEO-friendly, and easy to deploy.

Modern frameworks like React or Next.js: Impressive to judges, great for interactive projects, but requires a steeper learning curve.

If your team is new to frameworks, a clean hand-coded site can outperform a buggy React build. If your team has experience, consider Next.js web development patterns for server-side rendering, performance, and SEO.

Design Principles Judges Reward

Clarity: The topic should be instantly recognizable from the homepage. Avoid mystery navigation.

Hierarchy: Use typography, spacing, and color to guide the eye through the content.

Consistency: Reuse design patterns across pages. Navigation, buttons, and card components should look and behave consistently.

Whitespace: Resist the urge to fill every pixel. Generous whitespace communicates confidence.

Custom feel: Avoid templated designs. Judges reward custom color palettes, unique layouts, and thoughtful typography choices.

Content Is Half the Score

Many teams underinvest in content and lose points as a result. Your website should communicate the topic thoroughly, accurately, and engagingly. Include multiple pages — home, about/overview, key sections, contact/resources — each with original, proofread content. Cite sources appropriately, and include real imagery (created by your team or properly licensed).

Accessibility: The Easy Points Most Teams Miss

Accessibility is a scoring criterion that many teams overlook. Yet it is one of the easiest categories to maximize with a small checklist:

Use semantic HTML (header, nav, main, article, footer).

Provide alt text for every image.

Ensure color contrast meets WCAG AA (at minimum).

Support keyboard navigation — users should be able to tab through the entire site.

Use proper heading hierarchy (one H1 per page, nested H2s and H3s).

Add labels to all form inputs.

These simple practices boost your accessibility score and coincidentally improve SEO and usability.

Mobile Responsiveness

Judges will test your site on a phone. If it breaks on mobile, you will lose significant points. Design mobile-first: start with a 375px-wide viewport, then enhance for tablet and desktop using CSS media queries. Our front-end web development approach uses fluid units, flexible images, and progressive enhancement to ensure sites look great at every size.

Performance: Fast Sites Score Higher

Optimize images (use WebP or AVIF when possible), minify CSS and JavaScript, enable caching, and keep total page weight under 2MB. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse give you an immediate read on performance. Aim for a Lighthouse score of 90+ across the board.

The Presentation: Where Winners Separate Themselves

The oral presentation often decides who places. Plan it like a product pitch:

Intro (30 seconds): State the topic, your team, and the goal of the site.

Walkthrough (3–4 minutes): Live-navigate the site, pointing out design decisions, accessibility features, and technical highlights.

Business rationale (1 minute): Explain who your audience is, how the design serves them, and what business outcomes your site supports.

Q&A prep: Rehearse answers to predictable questions — Why did you choose this color palette? How did you ensure accessibility? What challenges did you overcome?

Teamwork and Version Control

Use Git and a collaborative platform like GitHub or GitLab. Branching and pull requests prevent the chaos of overwriting each other's work. Designate a project manager to keep the team on schedule, a lead designer to enforce visual consistency, and a lead developer to maintain code quality.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Spending too much time on one flashy feature while neglecting core requirements.

Submitting a site with broken links, typos, or missing images.

Ignoring the business dimensions of the topic.

Failing to rehearse the presentation.

Over-designing while under-executing.

Beyond the Competition

The skills you build for FBLA Web Design — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, design thinking, teamwork, presentation — translate directly to real-world careers. Many of our AAMAX.CO team members credit early competition experience for sparking their love of the industry. If you are passionate about digital design and development, keep going after the event.

How AAMAX.CO Supports Learning and Professional Work

Beyond helping competitors prepare, we build production websites for businesses nationwide using the same principles we teach. Our services include website design, website development, and web application development. Every project we deliver reflects rigor, creativity, and craftsmanship.

Good Luck — and Consider AAMAX.CO for Your Professional Projects

Whether you are a student gearing up for FBLA Web Design or a business owner ready to invest in a professional web presence, the fundamentals are the same: clarity, accessibility, performance, and purposeful design. When you are ready to work with experienced professionals, hire AAMAX.CO for web design and development services and experience competition-grade craftsmanship at a production scale.