What is a website?
A website is a space on the network that houses a set of related web pages organized hierarchically.
The underlying tendency is to mistakenly confuse the concepts of a webpage and a website, thinking they are the same thing. A webpage is part of a website; it is a single document, while a website is a unit formed by the combination of several linked and related webpages to display a broader range of content.
A website is a means of communication within the Internet that offers information through its various web pages. Its operation is based on the user’s action of navigating between them.
What is a URL?
The pages of a website are accessible from a common root URL, which connects to the rest of the site via the aforementioned hyperlinks. This root URL consists of a homepage, which serves as an introduction or welcome message, and appears when the user requests access to the website, providing access to the rest of the pages.
URLs organize web pages hierarchically, indicating, for example and in order, the site name, the section, the subsection…
Uniform Resource Locator (URL): The Uniform Resource Locator is used to name resources on the Internet and enables the browser to find a site or address on the network.
It is the standard that makes it possible to identify a specific element and its exact location on the network. Every element hosted on the Internet has its own address consisting of a set of characters that allows for the exclusive assignment of that address.
A URL is the global address of documents and resources within the network. It combines the name of the server providing the information, the directory where it is located, the file name, and the protocol used to access the data. Its purpose is to assign a unique address to the resources available on the network (text, image, video, etc.).
The format is as follows:
- Protocol: Also called a scheme. It indicates the type of service we want to use on the network. For example, http is the most common and is used for resources or documents, ftp for transferring files, or mailto for sending email, among others.
- Server: Indicates the hostname where the material is located. By default for the internet it is www, but this may vary if a protocol other than http is used.
- Port: Indicates a numeric field on the server. It is generally omitted, with 80 being the default for HTTP.
- Path: Indicates the path to follow or subdirectory on the server to find the resource, document, file, or whatever you are trying to access.
- Name: Indicates the name of the file or document. By default, it is usually index.html.
Having seen what they are and clarified the difference between a page and a website, I will now explain why a company should have its own website on the Internet.
A corporate website is a company’s calling card. It showcases its identity, its business activities, the products it offers, its location, and contact information, among other things. It serves as a communication channel with existing and potential new clients.
Types of websites
What is a website Types? There are two types of websites that a company can implement to benefit its interests:
Personal
What is a Website for persona? A persona website (or user persona) is a fictional, research-based profile of a typical user or customer, created to guide website design, content, and strategy by embodying the needs, behaviors, goals, and pain points of a target audience segment.
Corporate
What is a website in Corporate?
Their communication strategy is based on conveying, as fundamental values of the company, its history, experience, human team, logistical capacity and the quality certifications it has, among others.
It seeks to gain the user’s trust by showcasing its structure and experience as a guarantee of results and therefore of success.
This type of website has the disadvantage of presenting aspects that stimulate the company itself more than the user, who enters a website to quickly find the specific information they need and not to learn about the history or infrastructure of the company.
Product
Its objective is to gain the user’s trust through the quality of the company’s most outstanding product or service, focusing the strategy on engaging the user with the company through the value of said flagship product or service.
This type of website offers several advantages, as the message focuses on the basics, on what interests the user, allowing them to identify with and engage with the product or service, generating a sense of community, inviting user interaction, thus maximizing the value of the user experience and enabling them to share content that is relevant to the company, thereby expanding market share.
what is a website of product? The secret to a successful website is to be useful to both the company and the user, so to satisfy the interests of both, the ideal is to implement a corporate website linked to a product website.
Objectives of a website
The objectives that every company pursues when having a website are usually the following:
- Having an online presence to improve the company’s image, differentiating itself and standing out from the competition.
- Display relevant and constantly updated information to the user and present the company’s offers and promotions, thus enabling the sale of products or services both online and offline.
- Generate contacts, thereby acquiring new clients and retaining existing ones.
- Facilitate procedures and processes between company and user.
- Access to new markets.
Launching and maintaining a website requires investment from the company. Thanks to the vast possibilities offered by the internet for obtaining real-time data, it’s possible to measure the website’s performance and profitability, thus allowing the company to maintain or adjust its initial strategy as needed—a key advantage.
It is necessary to constantly evaluate the level of compliance with the objectives initially set in order to assess the profitability of said investment and the evolution of the desired results.
Advantages of having a website
What is a website advantages? The importance of a website is evident, since the Internet has now become the primary means of communication, being the only medium that increases investment year after year.
It is part of the lives of a vast majority of the world’s population, so the growth of a company depends largely on its presence on the internet, where it can make itself known and promote its services and/or products.
The internet is a tool for daily growth, a space where it is possible to search and find quickly, to communicate and be communicated with, where information flows to facilitate transactions, so a company must take advantage of this circumstance and make itself available to its public.
The fundamental reason for having a presence on the network is that the company offers both information and support 24 hours a day, allowing users to be interested in its offers regardless of the time of day or location.
The most important benefit that a corporate website offers, and which also makes it an obligation for a company, is that it is a requirement that customers demand today.
If a company does not have an effective online presence, it will be weakened and have less chance of growth than the competition, since the first thing a user does when interested in a product is to search for information online, making it essential that the company is present online and appears in that search, and does so before its competitors. What is a website?
It is vitally important for a company to have the best positioning and consequently the best visibility in search engines, but this is a section that I will analyze in depth and talk about later.
Currently, it is essential for a company to have a presence on social media, and I will also analyze and mention this section extensively later. A necessary and highly relevant preliminary step is to have a corporate website from which a company presents itself and talks about its products and/or services.
Some of the main advantages of having a corporate website are the following:
- Business card: Shows the company’s history: founding date, achievements… Allows it to be positioned in the user’s mind as an established and solid firm in which to place their trust.
- Differentiation: It offers a competitive advantage over the competition, projecting a distinctive image of quality and constant progress, helping to convey what the company is and how it works through corporate text, colors, and logo, among other elements, in addition to the website design itself. It updates and reinforces the company’s corporate image, projecting a modern and technological image.
- Constant and uninterrupted advertising: Due to its presence on the network, the information is accessible 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, which makes it possible to keep the user updated with recent information about the products and/or services integrated into the commercial offer of the company, being able to visit the website whenever they want and go from potential client to accomplished client at any time.
- Savings: It allows for a reduction in advertising investment in other media, as users can quickly and easily find up-to-date information about the company’s products and/or services. It saves time and costs in publishing company information. Contact forms and online messaging applications save on informational phone calls for both the company and the interested user. It is also low-cost compared to other media.
- It fosters communication: It generates contacts with users and other companies, thereby attracting new customers and retaining existing ones, as well as attracting new suppliers. Its public visibility makes it accessible to both interested users and potential suppliers of products and/or services, who may be interested in the company and request that it distribute their products.
- Communication fluency: Through the contact form or online messaging application mentioned above, the user can make any type of inquiry and obtain a response in a short period of time, even receiving it in real time.
- It gathers user information: It allows us to understand interests, tastes, and preferences. By using online surveys, users can leave comments and suggestions about products and/or services, which the company can then use as an opportunity for improvement.
- Internationalization: This allows companies to break down geographical barriers, crossing borders and showcasing their business model, products, and/or services globally. It enables worldwide expansion without the need for a physical presence. It propels the company into other countries and new markets, making a multilingual corporate website highly recommended for accessibility for international users. With proper logistics, it’s possible to conduct business transactions beyond the local area, whether national or international. What is a website?
