6 Popular Types of Website And How to Design The Right One
Discover the different types of websites, which is the best for yourself, and how to design for them.
Wiliam Wu
Digital Content Creator
Choosing the right type of web design is critical to your company’s success.
There are more than 1.6 billion websites in the digital space presently. Every one of them has been built specifically to do a thing or two – well, hopefully.
Every website must serve a purpose. You don’t just build a website for the sake of just having a “digital presence” on the internet. However, from our years of encounters and current experience, we can see that many are making that mistake.
Website designs have progressed over the years. Today, there’s a wealth of diverse designs and types of websites to examine. It’s not surprising that there’s a great deal of confusion and uncertainty about which website type and design are best suited for each company.
As a manager, designer or business owner, you must equip yourself with the knowledge about the popular types of websites – so that you can determine the one that best suit your needs. You may build the ideal structure for each company and its consumer base by studying what rivals choose and doing testing.
Here are the 6 popular types of websites:
1. Small-Medium Enterprise
A small business website provides information to the public about its products and services. It can include the company’s employees, goods, services, and culture allowing the visitors to learn more. A small company website’s objective is to present information so that clients may contact you directly. Some examples are restaurants, accounting agencies, service providers such as plumbers, etc.
Your small company website should help you “convert” visitors into clients – your visitor should sign up for your newsletter, register for an event, or even drop you a call.
The design should be consistent with your company’s identity and tone of voice. If you own a nightclub, your website may incorporate photographs of your establishment and use a dark background with neon colours to give off the exciting sensations. If you own a pet grooming service business, your web design will most likely be brighter and more photo-heavy.
Regardless of your industry, your website should include features such as your company details, contact page, logo, and user-friendly navigation for your audience.
It’s highly recommended to include an ‘About Us’ web page so that your visitors may immediately learn about your company. It’s also important to ensure that your contact information is available so that potential consumers may contact you. It’s also recommended to have its web pages optimized for the search engine – it will drive organic traffic eventually.
2. Personal Website / Personal Branding
Individuals who wish to have an online presence to voice their thoughts and opinions can create a personal website – it will help them develop their personal brand and get career advancement over the years.
Most personal websites are quite easy – they can be loaded with photographs and messages. Personal websites are often not required to use lead generating tools or SEO because they are shared manually with friends, family, and co-workers. However, if you want to utilize your website to advertise yourself as a professional, it doesn’t harm to optimize your material so that it appears in search engines.
The design features for this type of website are mostly determined by your intended goal. Will this be a fun site to share with your family and friends, or are you trying to establish your brand? If it’s the latter, you would want to give your brand a distinct appearance and feel.
Next, you will need to consider if your site is mainly to offer personal services or to serve as a hub for your internet presence. If you are a gym coach, you would need to create landing pages with various service bundles. Most importantly, you need to include your contact information.
A personal blog might be a good idea after all; whether it’s for business or pleasure. You may keep your website up to date by giving your ideas on your field of expertise or by writing blog pieces about your personal life.
3. Portfolio Website
A portfolio website provides a platform for creative workers to display their greatest work. This is perfect for architect agencies, designers, authors, videographers, painters, and even specialized pet grooming services. These websites exist to promote certain skill sets and services provided by the creators.
Portfolio websites usually have a few distinguishing characteristics. You may use slideshows, galleries, or portfolio animations to show off your work.
Depending on how you wish to present your work and your job scope, you may even consider embedding short clips.
You don’t have to show off every project you’ve worked on. You just need to select your greatest work and organize it into categories – so that your audience can easily locate what they’re looking for. Make each project stand out by explaining the narrative behind it.
Before inserting your prior clients’ creations in your web portfolio, it’s important to double-check with them if you could include them in your digital space. Not all customers will want their unique designs to be displayed.
You may also consider restricting access to your work by encrypting web pages with a password – only serious prospects are given the password to access your portfolio.
In addition, it’s also important to ask for testimonials. Clients’ testimonials on your portfolio website are a terrific method for happy clients to shout your praises and market your services for you.
4. Blog Website
A blog contains essays, photographs, and video clips that are constantly updated – they are intended to entertain or educate your target audience.
A blog website can be used to express one’s views, or it can be used by a corporation to provide important material to its clients.
Nowadays, it’s common for prominent individuals and businesses to establish their blogs. Expert content can boost overall credibility for both individuals and businesses. Blogs may also be used to generate content for social media postings and email campaigns.
Blogs may come in many forms and sizes, but the organization of articles is very absolutely crucial. For smaller businesses, a blog might be inconvenient. Before you establish one, it’s important to ensure that you have a team and a strategy in place to keep material fresh on a weekly or monthly basis.
Good category navigation is important since your viewers require a straightforward way to locate their area of interest.
Use graphic elements to draw attention to a new category or piece of content.
Last but not least, always include Call to Action buttons or sign-up fields, where possible, to capture your visitors’ email addresses. That way, you can update your visitors every time you have new content or exclusive material for them to consume. Remember, the power is in the email list. But that topic is reserved for another day.
5. E-commerce Websites
E-commerce websites are no strangers to everyone today. They are being primarily created as online stores for digital shoppers to shop in.
A full-service e-commerce platform like Shopify is a simple and quick way to get started. Your team can easily update inventory and add new products to the online store. Furthermore, because the system is integrated, sales, logistics, and marketing can all keep up to date.
On the design front, e-commerce platforms provide a variety of templates to suit the demands of almost any business.
These websites make it simple to add things to your shopping basket. They are usually integrated into payment systems such as Paypal or pay using a credit card, PayPal, or an eCommerce platform like Shopify.
6. Landing Pages
Landing pages are the type of websites that are designed specifically for marketing campaigns – they are designed to encourage visitors to perform a certain action such as signing up for packages, collecting email addresses, or signing up for a newsletter.
The information on a landing page should be kept to a minimum and should direct the visitor to a call-to-action (CTA). Allow lots of space surrounding your CTA and preserve things unrelated to the campaign’s purpose for future pages.
Landing pages should have straightforward headlines and calls to action, such as “Sign up for free newsletter” or “Start free trial.”
All the components on the landing page are carefully designed to guide the customer through a specific path to convert them into qualified leads.
Conclusion
A good design is more than just an appealing appearance; it must also increase user engagement and its content must be catered to the demands of your target audience.
You may consider checking out what other similar agencies or individuals have applied to their website design. From there, you can determine the type that suits your business model.
Knowing what the others have done with their websites will provide you with a good insight into what type of website will work best for you.
Are you getting the results you want from your website? Uxible offers first-rate website design services to assist you to reach out to your ideal consumers, creating more leads, and expanding your reach.