Case Study: The Webby Awards achieves improved performance and increased audience engagement with WP Engine

How WP Engine helped The Webby Awards breakthrough on WordPress

The Webby Awards, run by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences to honor excellence on the internet since 1996, faced growing traffic and high expectations for site reliability—especially during nominee and winner announcements—and the daunting task of migrating 20 years of content without disrupting the user experience.

Working with Code & Theory to rebuild on WordPress and migrating to WP Engine’s Digital Experience Platform, the team gained enterprise-level performance and proactive support during peak periods. The result was measurable improvement in engagement and stability: average session duration rose about 6–7%, pages per session increased ~5–6%, bounce rate declined ~2.4%, and the team gained confidence and time to focus on user experience rather than infrastructure.

The Webby Awards

Steve Marchese

Executive Producer