When building a website a good place to begin is from your own browsing experience. During your time on the net you have encountered certain patterns in the websites you have visited. Others have encountered these same patterns, they have been trained to expect certain things. You success will be a measure of how well you can give people the same only different.

Every website has an opening or beginning page. That's a no brainer, you will need an opening page. No escaping it. That is the first common component.

Common Components:

• Opening or Beginning Page

Something else which is very common in websites is a contact page. This is a page where visitors can go to contact (hence the name) the owners/managers/webmasters of the website. In addition to being common this is also a good thing. So let's add this to our list of common components.

Common Components:

• Opening or Beginning Page
• Contact Page

Not all websites have goods. But almost all have a product in one form or another. This can be services, ideas, reviews, goods, game tips, images, tech support, song lyrics, or ??? If you broaden your definition of "product" it quickly becomes apparent that almost all websites have product pages. Sometimes they will have a single page with a mish-mash of product summaries and product descriptions. And many times they will have a sensible mixture of a product summary page along with one or more product detail pages. Let's add these to our growing list of common components:

Common Components:

• Opening or Beginning Page
• Contact Page
• Product Summary Page
• Product Detail Pages

In a quiz about types of webpages many folks will mention ecard pages, forums, and quizzes to name a few. While these pages are memoriable and should be considered they are not in actual fact that common. I'd say 80% to 90% of the websites I visit do not have most of those page types. One thing which they do have, under many different names, is a support page. The page will not always be called the same thing. It might be a "customer satisfaction" page, or a guarantee page, or a complaints page, or a FAQ, or a Help page, or a service page. By whatever name it is called the idea is the same, give people a place to go when they are having problems with whatever goods or services you have provided. Let's add this to our common components list.

Common Components:

• Opening or Beginning Page
• Contact Page
• Product Summary Page
• Product Detail Pages
• Service/Support

This brings the list of common pages to five. To find out more about these basic page types Click Here for a Full Discussion of Basic Page Types or use the individual links below to explore the topic separately.

The five basic page types:

• Beginning or Introduction
• Contact
• Product Summary
• Product Detail
• Service/Support

While the above definition and exploration of basic page types is interesting and useful, it is in fact a bit of bait and switch. The title of this page was "A few suggestions on common components for all websites." Well, components does not only mean web pages. Other components of a website might be links, graphics, shopping carts, forms, and more. These types of components involve a level of detail that may be served better through general discussion spread throughout these pages -- leastwise that is our current presumption. Later we shall endeavor to address unique page pieces in a more comprehensive manner. However, for the moment, your exploration of your first website can best be served by checking out our next topic.

Next Topic: "Good Beginnings" A Simple Website