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Types of Web Sites – Find Out What’s Right for You!

There are many different types of web sites, but we’ve broken them all down in to two main categories under which all web sites can fall.

  1. Brochure Web Sites – Web sites that exist as an online form of brochure, perhaps to display who a business is, what they do and a point of contact.
  2. Functional Web Site – Web sites that exist to perform a specific purpose and that have functionality to achieve that purpose.

Although a web site is often spelt as “website” various academic institutions and references such as Merriam-Webster online dictionary and dictionary.com use the spelling “Web site”. The word web is capitalised because it is a shortened version of World Wide Web. We’re going to spell it as web site, not capitalised, for the purposes of this, and all our articles.

Brochure web sites are the simplest form of web site available. They will usually consist of 5-10 pages of information with little or no functionality. Generally if they do have any functionality it will be in the form of a contact form. Brochure web are most often created in one of two formats:

  1. With WYSIWYG Software – Built with software such as MS FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, these WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors require no programming knowledge and create what is referred to as a “static” site. This means the site consists of a group of pages that are managed by the user of the software. It’s not common to see these sites updated regularly.
  2. With a CMS (Content Management System) – Sites built with a CMS are generally easier to manage because the CMS will be online, and web pages can be created in it, the CMS will manage the linking between the pages on the site and will contain a WYSIWYG editor to edit the content. You wouldn’t consider these to be static sites as they are backed by a database and programming. As they are, generally, easier to manage they are usually updated more regularly.

Functional web sites can come in a variety of flavours, and with a varied range on functionality, all designed to achieve a specific purpose. Some of these types of web sites include:

  • Blogs – A web site set up as an online diary for one or more people. These sites can often have an online forum as well.
  • Business site – A site that performs a specific purpose for a business but doesn’t necessarily sell anything. An example may be a manufacturer web site that allows wholesalers to view latest catalogue and place account orders online.
  • Commercial, Commerce or eCommerce – These sites can take many form but are specifically designed to sell things. The ultimate example being Amazon.
  • Community site – A site designed to bring together like-minded people, generally on a specific topic.
  • Directory sites – These sites generally contain a directory of links to other web site. You can learn much more about directory web sites in this article.
  • Download sites – Dedicated to bringing together a lot of downloads, usually in a particular area such as software.
  • Information/Content site­­ - A site designed to be a resource, with a large repository of information on a given subject. The purpose of this site might be to attract a large number of visitors for marketing purposes, or to actually sell content such as a pornography site.
  • Portal site – A web site designed as a springboard, or gateway, to other resources and web sites on a particular topic. It may be the hub of a series of related web sites.
  • Reference sites – A type of web site designed as a database of references, usually to a particular topic, which can be user contributed. An excellent example of this type of site is the Internet Movie Database.
  • Trading site – A site designed to bring together people so that they can trade, or sell items to one another. These sites can be on a specific topic, or can be generic like the ultimate example Ebay.

This is not an exhaustive list, however it gives you an excellent idea of the types web sites that you can create.

The business models you can use to generate income from these types of sites are as varied as the sites that would be contained in each of these categories. However if you do some research you’ll find your feet.

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