Static Web Sites

In the case of static Web sites, all the pages are fully constructed by Web designers; any subsequent changes also need to be made by them.

Such pages are called "static" because their content doesn't change dynamically - the only way to change them is to have a Web designer modify them explicitly.

Example

To better understand Web sites with static content, let's consider the following example.

John owns a small bakery. One day he decides to advertise his business on the Internet. On his Web site, he wants to put information about breads, rolls, bagels, doughnuts, and cakes his bakery makes. Few times a year he comes with a new kind of bread or cake, so he would like his Web site to be updated when this happens. In addition, he wants to have a map with directions to help new customers with locating his bakery. He also decides that he is not going to sell his baking goods online.

Correctly, John selects static-content Web site: he is not going to have many changes to his Web site. This also helps him keep the initial Web site development costs down.

Few months later...

John's new Web site proved to be quite a success: he got new customers. But now they have to wait longer because the line is longer... So he starts to think about hiring a new person to speed up the ordering line. However, many customers, especially these who found him online, keep asking about ordering his baking goods online. In most cases, they told him that they would like to order the day before and then the next next morning just stop by to quickly pickup the order. John likes the idea, because this would reduce the line and help him in better planning while reducing the waste. However, he is aware that adding credit card transactions online might be too costly. But if he could just receive emails with orders...

To John's surprise, the changes required to support online ordering where not very costly: a simple shopping cart had to be added to his site, but other than that the content on his site remained static.

Summary

Based on the above discussion, we can summarize when a static-content Web site is a good idea:

Pages on the site are not going to change frequently. This applies to cases when:

	you don't have to frequently change text and graphics on your main pages;
	the products and/or services your company offers don't change much over time..

The list of products and/or services is not very long and individual pages describing them can be easily constructed.

There is no need for a sophisticated online ordering system. This means that you either don't plan to have online orders, or you will be fine with a very simple, email-based ordering system. Such ordering system supports basic shopping cart functions like selecting multiple items and calculating the total amount owned. Once the order is confirmed, it is delivered to you by email.
However, this simple ordering system cannot support advanced features like order tracking, long list of available products, verifying availability of requested items against what you have in stock, automatic stock tracking, online credit card transactions, and the like. If you require any of the above advanced options, you will need a dynamic Web site.

You don't need to have your Web site in any way connected to your back-end system.

The Web site itself is not offering any services to the visitors.

For more comprehensive checklist, also see the conditions for dynamic Web sites - if none of them applies, you most likely will be fine with a static Web site.

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Last update: September 17, 2005
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