The first thing that you should establish when in the beginning stages of building your webpage is to consider what the purpose(s) of your website may be. There are a lot of different types of designs that your website can be referred to as. You are probably thinking to yourself, what types of designs are out there, and what type of design do I want my website to be? This is a difficult decision because there are so many different kinds of sites that can be built. Some webpage’s that are out there in cyberspace are e-commerce, general (a.k.a. brochure) web design, and membership/ social networking / dating sites.

An e-commerce site is a site that allows consumers to pay for your products online with a credit card. Some examples of e-commerce sites could be Sears.com, Khols.com, or e-bay.com these sites let you shop online at your convenience. You could be shopping on a site for clothing, tools, or electronics whatever you believe you need. Once you find what you are looking for you can put the products in a “shopping cart”. Finally when you are ready to “check out” you pay for these products with your credit card. The shopping cart and credit card processing makes this web site an e-commerce web site.

If you are not looking to sell your products over the internet, another option that you can explore is a general (brochure) web design.  These web sites are good for getting your name out there, advertising and letting people know who you are. This site could be a simple 5 page site with information on who you are, what you do, and where you can provide your service/ products. These sites are a good idea not only for advertising reasons, but also because the 20th century revolves around getting information online.  People now days do not pick up the phone book to look for services, because they can just go to yellowbook.com to find the services easily. They can also use search engines on the internet to find the product or service that they are looking for. If you do not have a web page, people might just be “passing you by” while looking for the services/products that you can provide.

Finally, your site can be a membership/ social networking / dating site. These are sites that can be for gaming, finding romance, or just entertainment purposes (myspace.com).  These types of sites can also be e-commerce, requiring membership login for a price or they can be a free membership. Usually most of the membership/social networking sites are profitable by advertising revenue, while dating sites can be profitable by membership fees.