Types of Websites gives you a vocabulary and a method for classifying any site by purpose, content, structure, and genre, then applies it to every web property your organization runs.
No coding required. Includes the Classification Reference Guide and the Web Property Inventory templates.
Your boss asks for a redesign that "looks like Amazon." Your organization is a dental office with no online store. You also just found out there are two other websites under the organization's name that nobody mentioned.
Aw, man.
Here is the turn: once you can name what each site is built to do, every redesign request, tool choice, and content decision gets easier to answer. One question starts it: what is the visitor supposed to do here?
OK, man.
Most web managers can recite their site's login credentials before they can describe what kind of website they are actually running. Types of Websites is the course that closes that gap.
Website Type (Classification): A category describing a website's primary purpose, content model, and intended audience, used to align a site's structure, content, and tools with what it is actually supposed to do.
You will learn to read a site the way a web manager reads it: starting with the homepage call to action, then the navigation, footer, and page inventory, to identify what the site is really built to do. You will also learn how search engines classify sites through signals like structured data, the domain extension, and Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), and how that classification affects indexing and ranking.
The course walks through the common types, informational, business, e-commerce, content, portfolio, community, web application, landing page, and portal, then shows why most real organizations run hybrids of several at once. You will build a Web Property Inventory of every site your organization controls and classify each one, work that ties directly into your Accounts Management records.
Knowing your website's type is not a labeling exercise. It is the foundation every other web manager decision rests on.
The Inheritor. You were handed a website, and possibly three, without an explanation of what any of them are for.
The Founder. Your site started as a brochure and now sells, books, and blogs. You want to know whether its structure still fits.
The Nonprofit Volunteer. Your organization has an informational site, a donation page, and an event microsite. You need a clear picture of how they fit together.
The Career-Changer. You want the foundational vocabulary that every other web management skill builds on.
A repeatable method for reviewing any unfamiliar website, starting with its call to action and navigation
A working knowledge of the common website types and how to recognize a hybrid
An understanding of how search engines categorize sites, and the signals you control
A completed Website Type Comparison Sheet covering your site and three peer sites
A completed Web Property Inventory of every site your organization controls, with the type, audience, and core purpose of each
A clear statement of your own site's core purpose, ready to guide redesign requests and content decisions
Three milestones of video lessons with on-screen guides
Website Classification Reference Guide
Web Property Inventory and Website Type Comparison templates
A plain-language glossary of every term the course uses
A 10-question course quiz; score 70 percent or higher to earn your Types of Websites certificate
Isn't my website type obvious?
Usually not, and that is the point. Most organizations run hybrids: an informational site with a store, a blog, and a booking tool embedded in it. The course shows you how to see each part clearly so you can manage the whole.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. You will review sites the way a visitor does, then record what you find in a spreadsheet.
Where should I start if I'm new to web management?
Here. Types of Websites and Accounts Management are the two foundation courses; together they tell you what you have and who controls it.
How do I earn the certificate?
Complete the three milestones, then pass the 10-question course quiz with a score of 70 percent or higher. Your certificate is generated and issued automatically the moment you pass.
Accounts Management: pair your Web Property Inventory with the account behind every property
Features of Web: once you know the type, decide which features it needs
Strategic Web Management: put what you have learned into a 90-day plan