Website Types Page 2
Introducing the Blog
Blogs were, previously, only for individuals with a bit of time on their hands. However, of late it’s been discovered that it’s a wonderful system for connecting intimately with a website’s audience. A company may feel the need to implement a range of blogs - business, individual and project.
The easy editing and usability of blog software means that you can build content for a website quickly and easily. Some blog software is so flexible that, with carefully written extensions, it can be used for the content management of full sized websites. In fact, this website is a classic example - we use software called WordPress to manage our own site. There is more sophisticated software available, but we’re a small company with small budgets - for our needs, it’s perfect, and we can always convert at a later date.
Example Site:
E-Commerce
E-Commerce is a big thing, obviously, and an e-commerce site can be critical to your business’s success. By selling on the internet you can successfully expand your company outside its normal geographic range.
Usually it’s important to ensure that you have the back-office e-commerce systems to cope with demand. It’s no good doubling your business if you can’t keep up! Most e-commerce software has ties to order-management and stock-management software. Integrating most e-commerce software into the look and feel of your site is usually, but not always, possible.
Example E-Commerce Provider:
News
News presentation is usually slightly different to most websites - it can be very fast changing and the amount of content to manage can be huge. Semantically and chronologically arranged information can usually be dealt with quite simply, but as a site grows the requirements can extend. A fully featured, highly developed content management system is usually required for large news sites. Static pages (ie, not managed with a database) are an absolute no-no these days.
Example Site:
Community
Community sites, such as myspace, YouTube and Piczo all depend on building up a community of users who interact together - they keep traffic within the site, generate a buzz and an excitement for new items, and can be incredibly powerful as marketing tools.
Of course, building a community requires considerable time and money to be invested - you can’t simply create a site and expect people to arrive. They need a reason, and that is usually a community - which is awkward if you don’t already have one. So advertising and multi-tier marketing is important, especially during the early stages.
Example Site:
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