‘Why do I need a website?’ should be the first question that you should raise to have your decide on the type of website that you require. Defining the purpose is essential to determine the type of website one would require to serve that purpose. It should be defined in detail, like whether it is going to be used as a personal website or something informational (non-profit) or as a promotional website for the business or as a storefront for selling things. Once the need is defined, the type of website required can be determined.

If the requirement is just going to be to have a personal or a non-profit informational website then something called ‘brochure website’ would serve the purpose. Brochure websites are usually websites with simple and clean pages with some information and few images. In certain cases, it can also be noted that the brochure website would have only a single page.

Again depending on your budget and how you would want the website to look like, the usage of HTML or Flash for the website can be decided. Development of HTML websites would be more economical than designing a Flash website. HTML websites loads faster than a Flash website. For more attractive and interactive websites needs one can go for a Flash website.

The basic purpose of having a promotional website is to promote the business. It means that the website should be first made visible to the target audience. This can be achieved only when the website is well optimized and the website design should be highly search engine friendly.

Ecommerce websites can be developed if the purpose of the website is going to sell some service or product. Shopping cart, payment system and other required features for the ecommerce website should also be set up along with construction of the website design. The backend programming of such websites can be done using server programming languages like ASP, ASP.Net, PHP.

For websites that update data often on daily or hourly basis, having a separate updating system would greatly help. In this case, a CMS (Content Management System) can be developed and used to update the news or the web content. This would even help a novice to update the website easily. Every little requirement can be accomplished when the purpose and the needs are listed clearly.