Website Types Page 3
Portfolio
A surprisingly large proportion of the websites out there are what I would call portfolio sites for artists and photographers. I’d divide those into two subtypes as well - sites which are simply there to show a range of photographs off to prospective clients who may already have learned about the artist through other means, and sites designed to engage the visitor more closely, perhaps by including more information about the artist.
The latter is particularly useful to someone growing a business, who wants to attract the casual visitor. If the site contains both beautiful and useful content this can help. It’s a more difficult and expensive type of site to maintain, however.
The first type of site simply saves on printing lots of portfolios to send out to potential clients. The latter is about establishing your online presence with regards to growing your business.
Example Site:
The Homepage
Now largely superceded by the blog, but some people have a lot they wish to share with the world, or they are individuals who need to promote themselves for other reasons - vanity, work, or even just for the challenge of it. The author’s own site, Dave’s Gone Mental is typical of just such a site. It’s part blog, part travel review, part motorsport news. By using content management updates, corrections and new content are all easily created.
Example Site:
The Political/Satirical
Many sites are created either for political reasons, and usually fall into the above categories as well as this one, or for satirical reasons. Whether they deserve a category of their own is debatable, but a subtle political operator could deliver cleverly adjusted content according to the profile of the website visitor.
An example is that the content, or at least, the navigation, could be made different to a user with Macintosh. Knowing that Mac owners like to feel a little different to the crowd, to be more artistic, and yet often have more money, you can target them differently. Similarly, a Linux based visitor could receive a more technical version of your content.
Conclusion
This article has barely scratched the surface, however, it gives an idea of the wide range of possibilities out there. On top of the above you have forums, image libraries, booking services… it just goes on.
There’s little that you can’t do online, but costs become a large part of it after a while. This site, once you take into account all the words written, images included, and technical design, could be valued at many thousands of pounds. And I’d still say it’s a cheap one….
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