Different website types serve many purposes. You must choose the right one to grow your business faster and stay ahead of your competition. Read this article to learn 4 website types, their purpose, and how each may benefit your business's growth.
What are 4 business website types
- Landing Page
- Blog
- Corporate Website
- Online Store
1. Landing page
Landing page goal
The landing page is a lead generation website, which goal is to encourage visitors to take action. I.e.:
- Sign up for your webinar
- To get a free trial
- To buy now
- To download an ebook (a lead generator)
A landing page is a business web instrument highly related to lead generation and sales. Whether you promote your services or start a new product line, it requires a landing page.
The average landing page converts at 9.7%.
Average lead-generation conversion rates by industry. Source Unbounce
Some use cases for landing pages
Landing page features
- Direct call to action to use your offer
- Clear & short-selling proposition
- Convincing benefits that illustrate good life using your service or product
- Social proof, i.e., testimonials and reviews
- Inviting imagery
Landing page example
Landing page costs
A well-designed landing page costs start at $1500 and usually are about $2000 per one. Remember that a landing page works properly only as a part of a marketing campaign.
Landing page web design
Landing pages is a clear and simple pages designed to exact tasks, i.e., to collect visitor's data like emails for newsletters. That's not the only case. If you have a product or service, it's the most efficient way to convert visitors into leads via landing page.
A good landing page leads visitors' attention to a single call to action (CTA). Following the previous example, it'd be an email sign-up button. Have your CTA in almost every page section and within a sticky navigation bar. Considering landing page is all about visitor action, that's not bothering them, but help to take action when they are ready.
As mentioned above, landing page is most often part of a marketing campaign. That's not coincident. In fact, a lone landing page usually cannot get almost any traffic because the messaging on the page may be very different from what people search on Google.
An excellent example of the usage of a landing page in a marketing funnel would be the following:
- A visitor lands on a blog post from a search results page.
- You offer them a lead generation piece of content in place of their email.
- Visitor clicks and gets to a landing page, promoting this freebie solely.
- Now visitor gets the idea of your free offer and takes action.
- You start a nurturing email marketing campaign to be in touch with your potential customer. You can learn more about how email marketing campaigns increase leads & sales here.
2. Blog website
Purpose of blog websites
A blog is such a powerful tool for your business that it can be everything your business needs to attract new clients. While you share your knowledge, you answer the questions people ask. Showing your expertise while helping people gain a lot of a)traffic to your pages and b)hot leads. In fact, blogs are so influential that they take around 25% of all websites on the web. The reason is that more than 75% of individuals read blogs frequently. More than that, nearly 70% of visitors prefer to read a dedicated blog post about the company instead of seeing an ad from them.
Use case:
- News websites
- News sites provide everyday news online.
- Web portal
- Web portals usually collecting a specific theme/topic information in one place. From some point of view web portals are like archives.
- Wiki site
- Personal websites / Personal blogs
- Personal website / Personal blog websites are existing from internal purposes of an individual. It might be a lifestyle blog, traveling blog, hobby blog. They are known for providing experimental and interesting content to their audience followed by personal experience.
- Online magazine
Blog features
- Categories and tags
- Comprehensive content that covers a whole topic (i.e., guides)
- Brief & straightforward posts that answer a specific question (lead to and back to comprehensive content to support it)
- Each post has its own page with a similar layout
- Well researched content
Blog example
Blog costs
There's no reason to run a blog as a business except to attract more potential customers. The most effective and fast way to increase ROI would be to develop a blog website and hire content marketers. On average, the costs for the blog website would start from $1500, depending on complexity. The prices for content marketing begin from $1500 a month, including article writing, SEO optimization, website maintenance, hosting & domain name.
Blog website web design
We used to watch TV and read print media. And despite while there are media giants and will be, you can compete with them and win this game, getting people in need of your services or products straight to your hub - your blog.
Nowadays, even the elderly are on the web. Including social media, people are always searching for answers to their questions.
A blog allows you to attract millions of potential customers by putting words and thoughts in the correct order.
While you can publish thousands of content pieces, getting lost there is easy. Your concern would be to create complex but easy-to-use navigation. A Complex blog navigation may include search, archives, tags, categories, authors, and topic clusters.
The issue is that you better have your blog planned beforehand. Developing a new, more complex blog once in a while and migrating all your data to new functionality may cost you more than $10K.
To understand the potential and scale of your blog, you need to perform content planning & keyword research. Surely we recommend learning more about it and asking the Blue Bee Web team all the questions you have by requesting your free website & marketing review.
An important note is imagery & visuals. Although a blog is more of a text, the average visitor's attention is pretty short. Some images throughout your content piece would help your readers have a rest and restore attention for further reading.
It's time to ask a question: can we get even more traffic and conversion rate without overcomplicating your blog? The answer is easy. Don't make your website a blog only. Get yourself a business website. Learn about it below.
3. Small Business Websites or Corporate websites.
What is a corporate website?
Most businesses use business websites since it's the best way to promote products & services online. A business site is also known as a "corporate website." Basically, it's a combination of landing pages & blogs.
Once you have a blog post people find on google or social media, you link them to your products or services pages with a landing page structure. That way, you lead visitors on your road and isolate their attention from disturbances. Business websites helps you get the maximum from your web presence. You get the most leads you can via thoughtful funnel creation & direct Call To Action (CTAs). By the way, if you perform your website page structures well, there's a big chance that you can overcome your competitors fast enough. The reason is: that 70% of small businesses don't have a CTA on their website homepage, according to Business2Community.
Use case:
- Portfolio website
- Portfolio websites focus on representing portfolio of creative professionals
- Brochure website
- Brochure websites exist from the stone age. It's basically a business card, one paged and online
- Nonprofit website
- Some educational institutions that operating offline chose nonprofit website as their template.
Corporate website features
- The home page and service/product pages are basically landing pages.
- Having a blog with monthly updates
- Dedicated contact page
- Dedicated About Us page
- Simple top navigation
Corporate website example
Small business website costs
The only proven way to make your corporate website grow your business is to hire a team for this purpose. Why not yourself? Who would run your business then? The team comprises web and graphic designers, copywriter, search engine specialists, and a manager. That's more hours of work than you allocate for sleep. Also, does anybody in your current team specializes in web and digital marketing funnels?
You see, your website is not an add-on to your marketing efforts. It is a serious investment that requires a specialized team. That's the reality.
Based on this, we recommend allocating about $5,000 to your corporate website. Nearly half of this price setts for creating and optimizing your website's initial content. Which includes 5 blog posts as part of the whole project.
The monthly price for digital marketing and maintenance for a corporate website starts from $2500 a month. The price might be higher, depending on the amount of work planned.
Corporate website web design
Creating & having a small business website is unlike having a coffee machine. In the 2020s, this instrument can boost your business, opening your new markets and audiences and bringing thousands of new clients.
The thing is, you cannot make it profitable on your own. Whether you run your business or learn web design, development, digital marketing, search engine optimization, and copywriting.
In fact, only monthly investments will bring you a good ROI in several months. If you add paid marketing campaigns, your budget might skyrocket, depending on the industry, but you can get instant results.
Our experience tells us that it's more profitable to start without paid marketing & to focus on generating organic traffic. It may take 3 to 6 months, but it gives you factual data and an increase in sales based on your competition & actual buyer intent.
Once you have these numbers, you can start investing in paid marketing campaigns, testing new opportunities & improve weak spots.
4. Online Stores aka Ecommerce website.
Online stores / ecommerce websites purpose
Ecommerce store lets you sell products online quickly and essential for an online business. Accept & manage orders. Accept payments. Create coupons & promo codes. It's not always too easy to create an such ecommerce website. Read further to understand why in some cases, it's close to $0, and in others costs thousands.
By the way, keep in mind some latest current ecommerce data:
- In 2022, global ecommerce websites revenues are estimated to reach $5.5 trillion.
- 76% of adults in the United States shop with ecommerce sites.
- Smartphones are gradually replacing desktop computers as the main method of placing internet orders.
Use case:
- Educational website aka educational websites
- Educational website sell educational materials or online courses. Some examples: MasterClass, Coursera, Udemy
Ecommerce website Features
- High-quality images of your products
- Product Gallery
- Easy but complex categorization
- User account page with order history
- Personal information editing
- Payment integration
- Wishlists (optional)
Ecommerce website example
Ecommerce website costs
The price of an ecommerce website may really vary. Depending on your business needs, it might be a simple & free Shopify theme or a complex custom eCommerce self-hosted solution. You must know your business needs beforehand to avoid overspending on an ecommerce site that damages your business.
The average price for designing & setting up an online store starts from $3000, plus $500 a month for hosting & maintenance. Yet the typical price range is from $40 to $4000 a month.
It's impossible to put a precise number, but here are the factors that affect the final price for any kind of ecommerce sites:
- Product catalog size
- Products diversity
- The customization level
- Your business's annual sales
Ecommerce websites web design
Your online store shares the same goal as a physical store, yet some differences are essential for business. Most of the small e commerce websites sell products in a particular industry, to increase chances of prospective clients to buy.
1. Your online visitors are skeptical of buying online.
People cannot touch, see, smell & measure your products. That's why an online store requires the best images of your product, especially in its natural context. In the 2020s, you are also recommended to take videos of your products being used.
Remember, the only thing that may stop purchasing is a fear that an item cannot fit them.
2. The scaling of your business might require significant and costly website changes.
The more products you have, the more complex the navigation becomes & more products require unique features. Initially, you might not need any filtering, but as the number of products increases, this feature becomes essential.
Some other websites and their use cases
- Search engines
- Social media websites
- Community forum / Online forums
- Entertainment website
- Video streaming
How to choose from website types for your business growth?
It might be a bit overwhelming to choose the right type from such a diversity. We understand you need more time and answers on this website types list.
Get a free digital marketing & website review and ask more questions. We'll also tell you about our process, services, and experience. Looking forward, Vlad!
