Building a website: What type is right for you?

Edifice a website: What type is right for you?

two screens on a desk showing different webpages

(Image credit: Photo by Lee Campbell on Unsplash)

When considering edifice a website, you might ask: what sort of site do I need? To build a website, you actually demand to know the answer to this question earlier you lot showtime working on designs, or edifice the site with 1 of the best website builders. In the long run, this volition salvage you much time, effort, and potential headaches in futurity.

Websites perform multiple functions and offer multiple services, and as such can crave different applied science or infrastructure. Also remember that choosing from the all-time web hosting services is another task you'll need to undertake in sure situations.

Key factors to consider when you build a website from scratch include the following: the audience it will be aimed at; how many daily and weekly visitors information technology's probable to go; whether information technology'due south probable to exist viewed on standard or non-standard devices; and whether external organisation integrations, like address look-ups or drop shipping, volition be required.

In this feature, we've outlined the well-nigh mutual types of website, in society to assist you establish what blazon of site you might need.

1. Main business concern website

laptop open on a table with Amazon.com displayed — Every business concern should have a primary website, if it doesn't already (Prototype credit: Shutterstock)

Nearly every business concern has a website, or should have if it doesn't already. Some major companies may take more than i website, only in those cases, there will be one chief site: the one that comes upward offset in search results when you enter the proper noun of the company into a search engine.

Sometimes also known as a brochure site, a business' main site should nowadays all the information you'd need to know nearly its products and services. It should besides offering quick and easy methods for making inquiries about sales, support, or marketing.

Larger companies that have unlike divisions, or offering a wide variety of products and services for multiple markets, may accept different sites for each of those areas on what'due south known every bit subdomains. For instance, if the master site is at www.domain.com, a subdomain would be something like subdomain.domain.com.

In those sorts of situations, the chief site would only have a few pages at what is known as the superlative level, with most of the links going to the individual subdomain websites. Doing it this way means the construction of the main site is less complex, and it is easier to find the data y'all're looking for.

ii. Create a blog

Blogger's homepage — Blogging has been around for over 20 years, with Blogger ane of the best-known providers (Paradigm credit: Blogger)

Blogs first appeared in 1997, merely a few years after the internet equally nosotros at present know it was created. Originally, the term was weblog because blogs were, and all the same can be, a spider web log or online journal of the blog author.

Although there are yet many blogs that are written past individuals, these days blogs have expanded in their size, telescopic, and range of topics. Many companies have a web log on their primary website, which is often like a news section. And many blogs are focussed on a particular topic, and can have multiple writers contributing manufactures.

Blogs that are focused on a particular topic - for instance, engineering science or fitness - get attractive to advertisers, as they can target specific audiences that are interested in their products or services. Ad income means a blog can go a business in itself, hiring writers and spending coin to maintain and improve the site.

Another type of web log that has emerged in contempo years is the vlog, or video blog, which works in a like way to a traditional blog - except that the medium of communication is video instead of writing. Because blogging is so popular, with many people seeing information technology as a style to earn a chief or supplementary income, there are a huge number of tools you can use to create a blog.

There are many free platforms, such equally Blogger or Tumblr. Or you can build your ain blog using free website builders similar Wix or Weebly, or the most popular blogging tool, WordPress.

All of the services listed above and the best complimentary blogging sites are worth considering, with the sites mentioned able to take care of web hosting for you then you don't have to pay for information technology yourself. Even so, WordPress can also be self-hosted if you'd like more control over the hosting environment, via the best WordPress hosting.

iii. Product and services amalgamation

website open on a laptop — Affiliate marketing allows for profits to be made via content hosted on your site linking out to other businesses' products (Epitome credit: Photo by Le Fizz on Unsplash)

Advertisement is i method that a website can use to bring in income. Another is through what's known as affiliate marketing. You lot take a product or service you like, create content on your website that promotes information technology, and so every time the seller of that product or service makes a sale, you earn a commission.

How this happens is that the seller provides you with an affiliate link. Every time a visitor to your site clicks on a link to the seller's website using the affiliate link, your site ID gets recorded on the seller's website. If the visitor continues to consummate a successful transaction, a percentage of the sale is recorded against your chapter ID.

This may audio like a route to like shooting fish in a barrel coin, but unfortunately, it'due south not. Once yous get everything set and your site has a steady stream of visitors, it can be. But getting to that point doesn't happen overnight. You offset need to build up a sure amount of content to attract visitors. And so you demand a way of letting people know y'all take the content they might exist interested in.

This could be through word of mouth or an agile social media entrada, or yous might have to pay for advertising. And once you've got people to visit your site, yous've got to earn their trust then they keep coming dorsum, which means providing quality content.

All of this tin can take a long time to achieve. The rewards tin be great, but many people believe that directly selling is a more reliable mode to earn income from a website.

four. Ecommerce website

Shopify's homepage — Shopify is ane website builder specializing in ecommerce websites (Image credit: Shopify)

A site for selling products and services is known as an ecommerce site. Many ecommerce websites would have been started by businesses that originally sold from a concrete location, and then branched out online to attain more customers. Nowadays, at that place are many businesses that simply exist online.

At that place are many different avenues to selling online. You can create listings on well-known auction and shopping sites like eBay or Craigslist. Or you tin can cull to create your own site with an ecommerce website builder, similar Shopify, BigCommerce, or any of the all-time ecommerce website builders.

If you're looking for more control over your website, including the web hosting and engineering used, you can build a website with an existing shopping cart framework like Magento or OpenCart. Alternatively, yous can build something completely customized from the footing upwards, which would require specialized knowledge and would be more expensive.

Whichever method y'all choose, you need to ensure that your catalog can be searched easily, and so people can quickly find what they're looking for. And one time the customer has found what they desire, ordering and completing the transaction should all happen smoothly. This will exit the client with a positive impression, and make them want to come back to purchase once more in the future.

If you lot choose an existing ecommerce platform, most of these considerations volition have been taken intendance of already. Only you might not have as much command over how the site looks or functions. Edifice a site yourself may give you that control, simply volition be more expensive.

5. Back up systems website

laptop open on a desk with code displayed — Many websites support main sites for businesses, including those focused on technical support (Paradigm credit: Unsplash)

We mentioned subdomains earlier when discussing the principal business site. Subdomains, or fifty-fifty completely different domains, tin be a good idea for a variety of different reasons. Here are a few of those.

Brand identity

Some companies ain many different brands, and the brands are often more well-known than the parent visitor.

For instance, Ben & Jerry's is endemic by a visitor called Unilever. Unilever has its ain website, every bit does Ben & Jerry'due south. Information technology wouldn't make sense to firm the Ben & Jerry'due south brand under the Unilever website, because people wouldn't necessarily associate Unilever with the ice foam maker.

Unilever besides owns so many different subsidiaries that to try and fit them all into a single website would make the website hard to use for visitors, and even harder to maintain for the business organization owners.

Pure support

Many businesses, particularly those with a large number of customers, or those that exist solely online, will have split websites only for their support services.

Customers usually need to log in to their account to access support, and so they'll have a diversity of different methods at their disposal. Help desk tickets and 24/vii online conversation are ii pop methods, but back up websites volition frequently likewise have large libraries of assistance documents or FAQs.

Lead generation

If you accept a new product or service that you need to promote, creating a stand-alone lead generation website tin ensure it has the maximum impact.

Often merely a unmarried page, lead generation websites may look radically dissimilar from the main website of the business. Their primary aim is to lead the visitor to some specific interaction, whether it be filling in a contact form, or adding their electronic mail address to a mailing list.

Other website types

Nosotros've only really scratched the surface of all the dissimilar types of websites that exist. But many are variations on the ones we've covered, or could have features from several different types.

Social media websites could be viewed every bit being larger, more than complex versions of blogs. Gallery websites for artists and photographers, such as those outlined in our guide to the best website builders for photographers, are similar to ecommerce websites, but may not necessarily sell anything online. The best website builders for musicians meanwhile can be hybrids of ecommerce and gallery sites, and much more.

Then in that location are other different types like online learning portals, sports websites with results and squad data, news websites, and sites for presenting data about the weather or stocks and shares.

I thing that all skillful sites volition accept in mutual, though, is that they must have interesting content, and the content must be presented in a way that is easy for site visitors to access. That means having clear and logical navigation, along with pages that load quickly.