An eCommerce website is an online shop where people can buy products. Some businesses have both physical store locations

As a freelance web designer, this is an easy website type to get started with. You can help design portfolio sites for your friends and family in return for recommending your services. Referrals are crucial to the growth of a freelancing business.,As a designer, you have the opportunity to not only design a great website presence for your client’s business but maybe even offer logo and branding services that they can use throughout the life of their business.,When designing a blog website, focus on the structure of the site. Think about how you want to display a series of blog posts. Know that the content will change as new articles are uploaded, but consider how you want to show the title, author, article summary, read more button, and all the other elements of a good blog website. A good user experience is super important on a blog website so the user can easily find what they are looking for.,As a web designer, you probably won’t be asked to design too many personal websites unless it’s as a favor to a friend or family member who wants to start and share a project they’re working on. However, if you’re new to designing websites, this could be a great way to get some practice in a low-pressure environment.,Most businesses these days have a website where they can share what they offer, awards and accolades, past examples of work, customer testimonials, specifics on services they offer, and just about anything that helps tell the story of what the business does and how it helps people.,Since they’re often not too complex in content you can choose to design and develop your own website with Webflow, a tool to help you build custom websites. But if you prefer to focus on design rather than development, there are also many services out there like Squarespace or Wix that make it easy for anyone to create a portfolio website quickly and easily. You pay a monthly or yearly fee to use the website builder tool and keep it hosted on their platform. They can be costly to maintain but they usually offer some level of customer service to help with questions and problems that may arise which makes it worth paying for.,The goal of a personal website is exactly that, personal. It might not be to sell something or promote work but merely to post and share thoughts. It can feature a blog, a one-page resume with links to other social platforms, or whatever you want to share.,The Internet is a wide-open space with so many types of websites and content out there to discover. As a designer who’s been in the industry for nearly 10 years, I’ll offer tips and recommendations for which may be the best ones you’ll want to work on and which ones you may not. Let’s dive into 12 of the most popular types of websites for freelance web designers to understand.,The first website you will probably ever create as a designer is your own portfolio website. A portfolio website is used to display and promote examples of someone’s past work. Mostly used by those who work within a creative field, a portfolio site is essentially a visual resume. It demonstrates your skills as a creative and shows your best work in hopes of attracting prospective clients or employers.,A blog is a website that’s regularly updated with articles, also called blog posts. These sites can be run by an individual, a group of people, or even companies. The purpose of a blog is to share information on a specific topic to attract an audience. Every blog is different but most have a goal of lead generation. By posting well-written and researched content, you can rank for specific keyword search terms and generate quality traffic which may lead to new customers.,While good habits can set you up for a productive morning, some morning activities hinder our productivity and overall mood and can derail the rest of your day. How you spend the first few hours of your morning is as important as how you spend the last few hours of the day.,Try practicing designing a simple one-page website that catches a user’s attention and shares the most important information about the individual whom the site is for. It can be a fun challenge as you won’t have as much content to work with.,When it comes to designing for a portfolio website, the sky’s the limit. But the most important thing to remember is to let the work shine through. Rather than having a complex website design with fancy animations, you want to wow potential clients and employers with your work and guide them to contacting you for your services. Each portfolio site should be unique and reflect the designer or creator of the work. So you may want to lean toward a minimal design layout to allow the work to speak for itself and promote a good user experience.,You’ll notice most blog websites look templatized — that’s on purpose. There needs to be structure to the design of a blog website so it’s easy for the end-user to read fresh, new content. On the backend, these websites use a CMS (content management system). With a CMS, you can create, manage, modify, and publish content with a user-friendly interface. This makes it easy for someone to update and add new content to the blog, rather than having to pay for a web developer to make these updates.,Design and branding are vital to a business website as it’s how they can set themselves apart from the competition. When designing these types of websites, it’s important to gather as much information upfront from the client about their business. Do they have an existing logo, brand colors, tone of voice, style of photography? Or are they a fairly new company that is looking for help in these areas as well?