Deciding on the type of website youre making right from the outset can save you plenty of time in the long run.
Because if you spend time and effort on making a certain type of site, only to be forced to try and turn it into something entirely different, it can be quite a painful not to mention costly experience.This scenario is especially true of e-commerce sites, as they require special facilities and coding that a different kind of website certainly wont need.There is little point going to the expense of creating a site with all the functionality to sell products if youve no intention of offering online sales.
And equally, adding this functionality into a site that was previously meant to bea blog or portfolio solution is going to be a frustrating experience.So what sort ofwebsitedo you needLets explore some of the main types of sites, and whether they fit the bill for you.Main business siteEvery major company has a main site, the one that youre invariably directed to if you put the firms name into a search engine, because its returned at the top of the search results.At thislocation,you should find all the information about products and services that are offered by the business, and be able to establish a communication channelforsales, support or marketing.If the company concernedhas many products or supports multiple markets,the main site often has averylimited selection of pages at thetoplevel, witha series of subdomains representing various functions layered below that, all of which are separate websites you can visit.Bychoosing this model,the site structure ends uplesscomplexandallows for theisolationof e-commerce technology on the sections associated with financial transactions.For companies that arent big blue chip or multinational affairs, the main business site can be something entirely different like a blog.The blogWhen blogs first appeared they were generally a personal site with a stream of thoughts on a subject or the life of the blogger.Like most things on the internet theyve evolved, and they now combine the regular blogging function with branded sponsorship, product reviews,site-relatedproducts (T-shirts, mugs, and so forth) and services.A blog that does these things and utilizes targeted advertising can be a source of income for a popularblogger.And, with theregularincome,itis much easierto justify the time spent in maintaining the site and creating new content.Blogs can be code-built, madewithwebsite builders, ormanycreatorschoose to use the most popular blogging tool: WordPress.Another usefulmonetizationmethod is affiliation.Product and services affiliationLets imagine that you have a passion for lawnmowers, and you have a blog where you discuss the technology involved in mowing lawns and the latest productsreleasedinthis sector.If you can create a list of all the lawnmowers made by a given brand, and then link to another site where theyare sold, areferralfeecan be earnedfor directing your visitors tothose locations.Building one of these sites isnt an overnight exercise, though, as accumulating enough content to attract visitors, and then gaining the trust of those readers, all takes time.Those who pick the right products or services can be very successful, but getting there can easily take two or three years of work.The consensus is thatdirect selling isaneasierpath.Selling siteMost e-commerce sites started as a normal business doing work through either phone sales or with aretail bricks-and-mortar location.
But now some start out from a website or by usingeBay,or one of the other major selling portals.These sites dont generally need a blog or other content astheyre updatedwith new product lines and special offers as a means to generate traffic.What these sites need most is a way for the product catalog to be easily searched and navigated.
And, when the customer has found what they want, a means to process theordersecurely, and then confirm that order back to the customer.While this might sound easy, there are numerous caveats to creating e-commerce sites that make them challenging to create and maintain.Often the best way to create one is to buy an existing e-commerce model and then customize it with bespoke branding.
Thats because building such a site from scratch is an expensive exercise that requires specialist knowledge.Support systemsNot every site can be a big standalone venture, and often isolating a business offshootwith auniqueweb location has many advantages.Here are a few of the better reasons for having a subdomain and associated website:Brand identityEveryone knows Kelloggs, so well in fact that it has become the accepted term for Corn Flakes, even if it is technically a brand.Fewer people know that the company that makes this breakfast cereal is called The Kellogg Company, and that it also makes a wide range of other products including crackers and cookies, plus it owns other well-known brands likeCheez-it.Often those brands are more important to the organization thanthe holdingcompanysidentity, and therefore aseparatewebsite is needed where promotional material can exist away from the corporate content.A good example isNestl, which has an official websiteatwww.nestle.com.But it also has a brand site for KitKat in the UK that canbe found here.The other advantage of branding sites is that theyre very easy to disappear should the brand or product fail, rather than attempting to remove all the references from the main site.Pure supportProduct and service contract support is big business.
And having a dedicated website that can manage that part of the operationcan convince customers that theyre getting somethingusefulfor their money.Usually, access to the internal resources on the support site is via customer login, and support requests are subsequently managed through a ticketing system that records the progression of the request.By way of providing some self-help options, many support sites haveanintegrated forum, an extensive FAQ, and a complete collection of support documentation.Having livesupport responders available for a chat is also common.Lead generationYouhavea new product or service, so naturally you want to direct customer interest in that to a specific new team who will follow those leads.Achieving this is remarkably simple, and is usually done with just a single-page site that has the company brandingand a contact form for those who want to register their interest.What could be simplerOther website typesThere are many site types that weve not covered indetailthat aremostlyvariations on what weve mentioned or amalgamations of traditional types.Artists, photographers, sculptors and artisans of all types often have sites that are effectively digital galleries, allowing potential customers to see the range and quality of work on offer.Homage sitesexistformusicians andactors,and there are also the likes of streaming media portals, historical reference collections and translation services.
The variety of site content is almost endless, although they allbuild onthefundamentalconcepts of easily navigating through that content and directing the visitor so they can find the knowledge, service or product that theyreinterestedin.The skills needed to build any type of website are essentially the same,excepte-commerce sites, where financial transactions require specialist knowledge to handle safely.Sn8ww3vnaHqi2Y4YxKdMoZ.jpg#