Dynamic Websites and Its Pro’s and Con’s

Dynamic Websites and Their Pro's and Con's

Continued from the previous article “Static Websites Its Pro’s and Con’s“.

Dynamic websites are the websites with the “fancy” features and functions. Some of the dynamic websites you are likely familiar with are Amazon, Buy.com, ebay, Google, Wikipedia, etc. Dynamic websites are not just for big companies or big e-commerce websites/businesses, they also work for and are used by many small businesses. (This blog is a dynamic website.)

Dynamic websites often are written with and utilize something called server-side scripting such as PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), ASP (Active Server Pages) or JSP (JavaServer Pages) along with a database such as SQL (Structured Query Language) or MySQL to perform complex functions and maintain and use data for a website. As Wikipedia simply puts it; “A dynamic website is one that changes or customizes itself frequently and automatically.”

You are probably more interested in what a dynamic website can do rather than what technology it is built on. A very common type of dynamic website are e-commerce websites. It is a website with programming and a database created to allow a small business owner to add and store piles upon piles of products and information. This website also allows customers to browse and shop on their computers and devices. This is just one example. The possibilities of how a dynamic website can benefit and help small business owners are endless.

So when does a dynamic website make sense for the small business owner? It makes sense in the following instances/situations:

  1. When you want to maintain the content of your own website
  2. When it’s more work to create/maintain a static website for what you are trying to accomplish
  3. When you can’t accomplish what you want with a static website
  4. When it is less expensive than a static website

Lakes take a deeper looking into each of the items above:

1. “When you want to maintain the content of your own site”: Often, dynamic websites have “control panels”, “login areas” or “administration areas” which will allow you to log in to update and change your content. In order for you to change the content on a static website, you will at minimum, need to have HTML/XHTML and CSS knowledge. From our experience, most business owners don’t like the idea of an extra part-time (or even full-time) job becoming or acting as a Web designer, Web developer, or Webmaster and if you feel the same way, then a dynamic website may be for you.

2. “When it’s more work to create/maintain a static website for what you are trying to accomplish“: Let’s say you want to sell tee-shirts on your website. If you have 4 sizes and 5 colors, you have 20 different possible combinations. That means you may need to create 20 static webpages and/or shopping cart buttons/options for each different tee-shirt (small red, medium red, large red, extra large red, small blue, medium blue, etc.) Now, let’s say you have 20 colors instead of just 5 colors. The number of pages you need on your website just jumped to 80! A dynamic website will make your life much easier here!

3. “When you can’t accomplish what you want with a static website”: I just search for “cookie recipes” on Google and it told me there are about 50,800,000 results. By default, each search-result page displays 10 results. If you were to build a similar website, that would mean you would need 5,080,000 individually-built webpages to display all the results! Let’s not forget updating the webpages to reflect more recent data/information. It is just simply impossible! It’s the same idea with Amazon’s online store. Even if you had a more manageable size inventory than Amazon, your business’s time, labor and resources can be put to better use elsewhere.

4. “When it is less expensive than a static website”: Static websites are often cheaper in the beginning but as you can see from above, it can get very expensive very quickly if you plan on growing. Also, there are just some things a static website will never be able to do.

Here are situation where you as a business owner can use use dynamic websites to help your business:

  • Adding e-commerce to accept orders for a brick-and-mortar business
  • Starting a brand new e-commerce business
  • Starting an e-commerce website to supplement your brick-and-mortar business
  • Building a website that can link to your inventory system and/or accounting system to simplify your operation
  • Building a website that links to your suppliers, vendors or service providers to simplify for a smoother operation
  • Allowing your customers to manage their own accounts for their convenience
  • And more!

As you can see, there are many ways a small business owner can make use of a dynamic website. The possibilities are virtually endless! If you are looking for a dynamic website or if you would like to know how one can help you and your business, please contact us.

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