There are multiple categories of websites available on the internet. Before you decide to get yours built, figure out what category you fit in. Take a look at our 5 categories of websites.
- Informational Site
An informational site is just as it sounds, a site that has basic information about your business. It is one where it can be as simple as just a page with a description of your services/products. With most Informational Sites, there is little interaction and/or input necessary from the viewer (your customer). You go to an informational site just to get information. Nothing more. Here are some examples of a basic and advanced informational site:
Basic: A page for a restaurant listing hours of service, location, and some menu items.
Advanced: A page for a photography service site listing hours of service, location, examples of work (portfolio), ability to contact through a form, ability to schedule an appointment.
As you can see both, the basic and advanced, version of an informational site is mainly used to provide information about your services/products.
- Ecommerce Site
If you are planning on selling anything online, you are going to need an ecommerce site. An ecommerce site allows you to put a list of all your products/services and also gives your visitors the ability to add the product to a cart, order and pay for it online.
An ecommerce site will also allow you, the owner, the ability to manage the products you’re selling, ie. Adjusting stock levels, adding new products, deleting old products. If you are selling a product, you must have an ecommerce site! If you don’t have one, let’s talk. To have one built is easier than you might think.
- Social Networking Site
If you’re planning to bring together people in a central location online, you’re most likely going to need a social networking site. It gives your users the ability to share and post content on the website. You can add a variety of features to allow collaboration and communication between users of the site.
- Media Site
If you’re going to be developing a lot of digital content, you’re going to need a media site. At a high level, a media site can be something like a news site, a radio station site, or a magazine site. These types of sites should have a way to manage all the media content.
- Customized Sites
If the site you’re looking for a website doesn’t fall in one of the four categories, your next best bet is to get a custom built website. This is usually the step taken when you have a lot of unique features you need to incorporate into your website. For example, if you’re trying to build a job posting site with additional features such as posting to social media, being able to manage applicants, tracking their selection process, etc, you’ll need a custom built site. In most cases, you can build these types of custom features on top of one of the four categories of sites from the list above.
These are high level categories. There are many variations of what is mentioned above. If you’re in the process of building your business website, reach out to us for a free consulting on your project.