10 Types of Web Pages Every Website Should Have
Starting a new website from scratch may seem a bit intimidating, especially if it is your first website. Therefore, WordPress themes with premade inner pages may prove to be of great help as apart from providing you with ready-made layouts, they also remind you of the pages every website needs to have.
Static pages provide structure to your website. They don’t get buried under new posts, and they shape your website’s or blog’s image. You may have great content, but if your website doesn’t have all the pages it needs to have, the chances are your audience/customers may easily not take you seriously.
In this article, we’ll go through all the types of web pages a website needs to have to ensure its optimal performance:
Example: Deston – Corporate Business Theme
Although not every visitor will come to your site using the Homepage, you need to have a “front door” to your website. The homepage is still the most common point of first contact between your visitors and you, so make sure it conveys the right message.
This page should explain to your visitors the essence of your website in about eight seconds, as this is the typical time it takes for a visitor to decide whether they are staying on your site or not. Don’t hesitate to use the most beautiful images and the most compelling copy on this page, as this can be your only chance to make your case.
Make sure you include and highlight all the most attractive content, benefits, and advantages your blog/website has to offer. Make sure a menu tab is visible and easily accessible. Check whether the style and tone of this page are in line with your overall content strategy and design.
Consider this page as the first handshake – don’t miss the chance to make a great first impression, use all the best tips and tricks to make your homepage memorable.
This is the page where you get to tell your big why:
- Why did you start this blog/website/store
- Who stands behind the idea
- What is the purpose of your blog/site/store
- What makes you, your content, your services, or your products special?
When you browse corporate About Us pages, you’ll notice certain statements like Customers come first, or We only offer top quality, etc are constantly repeated. These are the generic phrases you should avoid at all costs, however seductive they may sound to you at some point.
This is the page that can help you build credibility and trust, so use it wisely. A trustful relationship with consumers is the essence of the success of every type of website. Try to be as honest and professional as possible, people feel when someone is faking it and you will not be able to keep their attention unless you’re for real. Tell your/your company’s story, don’t hesitate to show your personality.
Including your/your team’s picture is highly recommendable as it allows the relationship with the audience to become a bit more personal.
Well designed About Me/Us page can also help your SEO – sprinkle it thoughtfully with your keyword and enjoy the results.
If you are running an online business or offer any kind of services/products, a Product and Services page is a must-have for you.
This is the page that goes into details about what you’ve got to offer. It is on this page where you want your visitors to think – “here is the solution to my problems”, or “this is exactly what I need”. So, it is to your advantage to be as specific and precise as possible when it comes to describing the types and/or services that you offer. You obviously can’t describe every product in detail on one page, you would need a special page for each product in that case, and that’s also something you can do, but the point of the Product and Services page is to let your visitors know you have the solution to their problem or an answer to their needs.
If you decide to give each product or service its own dedicated page, don’t be afraid to tell everything you find necessary on that page. The more information and data you provide, the better your conversion rates will be. There are many ways to make your product pages more effective, you just need to explore a bit to know what exactly would work the best in your case.
Regardless of whether you run a website for professional or personal needs, the Blog page is a great opportunity to foster an honest relationship with your visitors/consumers.
For business websites, a blog is a great way to make communication with the customers more personal, to share updates and news related to products/services and business in general, to build your brand through sharing relevant content and interesting stories.
The impact a quality blog can have on your SEO is immense. Google indexes your blog pages just like any other content on your site and with basic SEO knowledge and a good SEO tool, you can do wonders for your business just by blogging smartly.
A blog is also a chance to establish yourself as an authority in the niche you are covering. And once you gain your target audience’s trust, it will be much easier to accomplish any other goal you have related to your site.
Example:Esmée – Fashion Store
Even if you are only running a personal blog, there are many reasons why you need to set up a Contact page. You may seem interesting to someone to make an interview with you, your site may be a good place for a company to advertise their business, someone may want to offer you a job… The point is, you have to make it possible for different people to contact you easily. Some people prefer to make contact through email, others like to use the phone – it is on you to decide what kind of contact suits you depending on the type of website you run.
The Contact page should contain the info about your preferred method of contact, social media links are also a good idea to include and if you are running a business, you may want to share the physical address of your offices.
Depending on the type of website you run, you’re going to need a different set of legal pages. Privacy Policy page for example is mandatory to have regardless of the type of website you run. The Terms and Conditions page is not mandatory but it is very useful. You may want to establish some rules regarding the comments on your site, hence you’ll need a Comments Policy. Disclaimers of all kinds should also find their place on your legal pages. Make sure to explore all the types of legal pages a website needs, to be able to choose which one you need on your site. Generally, their main purpose is to protect both you and your visitors from undesired complications, misunderstandings, and similar issues. There is a large variety of tools that can help you craft privacy policy and other pages of this type quickly and easily, without the need to hire a professional.
If you get asked a lot of the same questions or expect to be asked plenty of typical questions about the content you share on your website, having a FAQ page is an absolute must. Even if you don’t expect any questions at all, you may use this web page as an opportunity to share targeted info about the product/service or any other type of content on your site that you want to drive the visitors’ attention to.
In case there are many questions you want to answer on this page, you can break the page into sections and categorize the questions in the most convenient way. Too many questions should never worry you unless you don’t have a good enough answer to provide.
The FAQ page is a great chance to educate your visitors about your blog/website/business. As a blogger, you may want to share some personal details on this page, as a company you may want to clarify why your prices are more affordable than your competitors‘, as a news portal you may want to explain why you don’t cover certain topics, etc. Just make sure you use a casual yet professional and convincing tone on this page as a friendly voice can do a lot for your brand.
To ensure the FAQ page looks attractive and has all the necessary elements, it is a good idea to use a FAQ plugin that will allow you to set this type of page quickly and easily.
Visual storytelling is a very powerful way to persuade someone to stay on your website and purchase your products/services at some point. Images say a lot more than words, and this is especially true if you are offering services like web design, graphic design, photography. copywriting and similar. Sharing your portfolio of works will tell more about you than any words could. You may want to consider including a video about yourself on this page too. To ensure this web page looks just as great as your works do – consider employing a WordPress gallery plugin.
You can not plan mistakes and you certainly don’t want them, but the fact is they are going to happen but if you are well prepared you can easily mitigate its effects. When it comes to websites of all kinds, broken links and missing pages are the least desirable things both for you and your users. While you can not prevent every server and WordPress error you can prevent your users from leaving your website in case of such an error by having a well-designed 404 page with useful links. This page can be a great way to show your creativity and an excellent example of how to benefit from inevitable mistakes. Smooth animations, useful information, practical suggestions, and similar content wrapped in a good copy are very effective in reducing your bounce rates, and a great way to show to your users that you have everything covered.
This type of web page can be very engaging and effective in keeping your audience interested. There doesn’t even have to be any special physical event to have an event page on your site, you can use this page to announce a new video, a special promotion, or any other activity that is about to take place in the foreseeable future. Informing your audience about your plans in an enticing manner can be a great way to tickle their curiosity and make them come back for more every now and then.
This is also the page where you will be sharing all the info related to the real events if you have them, all the latest news related to your website, and similar. Just make sure that whatever you share here is just as interesting and important for your users as it is for you.
Wrapping Up
The pages we listed in this article are useful for literally any kind of website you may have. In case you plan on setting up a website as an online side-hustle, make sure you get familiar with all the legal pages that are necessary to have on your site to protect yourself from possible, undesirable legal consequences. These ten pages we described here provide a basic structure to your website, and are a great place to start from. Once you have them all set up and ready, you can focus entirely on creating amazing content.
We encourage you to continue exploring the web pages that are typical for the type of website you plan to set up. Note that legal pages always demand special attention – privacy policy and disclaimers are of great importance and can prevent a significant amount of headaches if you have them properly set up and displayed.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
