Web Page vs Website vs Home Page (What are the Differences?)

When you hear for the first time words such as web page or website seems hard to understand their difference since it seems to have a similar meaning. I had the same question when I started to search how I can create a website some years ago.

Here are the differences between Web Page, Website and Home Page:

In the next paragraphs, I will give a more detailed explanation and share with you real examples so you can easily spot the differences!

A Website (or site) is a collection of web pages and other resources such as images, video, files, text, and code. Web pages cannot exist without a website.

You can access the content of a site by using any web browser (google chrome, firefox, etc).

The website’s address on the internet is actually a number like that 198.54.115.155 which we call IP. But since people are not good of memorizing numbers we use domains instead (ex google.com).

The domain is actually a redirection of the real website’s address which is the IP address I mentioned previously.

All the web site data (web pages, images, code, etc) is stored in servers and the public can find that material by typing the site’s domain in their web browser or from google search engines (like google, bing).

A Server is just a supercomputer that its only job is to store website data for multiple sites. It doesn’t look like a normal pc but it is built only to be effective for storing data.

A Web Page is a part of a website and it is a combination of code, images text, or video. The code explains to the browser in what order and where to show the images, text, video in the user’s screen.

The Web Page is identified by a specific URL that anyone can type in his browser.

URL is a specific unique address that directs the internet user to a specific document/web page that is hosted in a server.

Home Page is the first web page that you see when visiting someone’s site. Usually, this web page links to all the other web pages and you can navigate easily to the one you want.

You can usually find there the logo of the business that owns the website or/and the main products that they sell. If you visit the homepage of a blogger you probably will see his last blog posts or the ones that are most popular.

My site is https://buycompanyname.com and it is a collection of different web pages. The whole content is considered as a website. My page with the domains I sell, my blog, my “contact us” page, etc.

When you visit my URL address the first thing you will see is my home page. There you can move to other web pages like “about us”, “contact us” etc. There are cases that a website has only 1 web page, in that case, you will not see any links to other web pages.

An “about us” page or the website’s blog page are examples of a Web Page. The post that you read right now is a web page. It contains specific information for a topic.

My opinion is that you can use any of these terms without a problem but let’ see what is typically correct by using popular dictionaries.

When we search in Merriam-Webster dictionary we see that they refer to the website as the popular main definition but they also mention web site as an alternative.

In Lexico dictionary (powered by Oxford) if you search with the term “web site” you see no result! If you search as “website” then you see a definition.

In short, we can say that the correct word is the website.

Company or business website

A website that presents details for your current company. Some of them can be your main services or product, how someone can contact you, your physical location and some info about yourself and your team.

E-commerce Website

When you sell your digital or physical products online then you have an e-commerce website. Your site can be a business and e-commerce website at the same time.

A site that is owned by an apparel company that sells its clothes online is a good example.

Blog

When you post content often about your views in certain subjects or you provide useful information. Think about a blogger that shares his experiences from traveling destinations.

Community-based Website

When the content of a website is created from users other than the original creator.

Think about a forum or a site that people ask a question and rest members of the community give the answers (like quora.com)

Social Media

Sites like Facebook provide a platform for people to create a profile and interact with them.

The main target is not information but mostly creating social connections and “friendships”.

Marketplace

An e-commerce website that let others create an account and sell their inventory goes under that category.

A good example is eBay where multiple sellers can create accounts and sell any kind of goods.

Search Engine

Sites that help you find the best resources on the web are called search engines. Sites like Google or bing fall under this category.

They scan almost every website that exists, they categorize it with some complex algorithm and then when a user performs a search query they try to provide the best available result.

Products Page

Here you find all the products of the company and you can buy online or request a quote. A good example is a company that sells books and on the products page, you can see the best sellers or check a specific category.

Services Page

A web page related to the services a company offers. For example, a marketing company can showcase some important clients that helped them in the past and describe their main services (branding, social media, etc)

About us Page

On that page, a company/person talks about how the company/site started and some details for their background. Many times we can see photos and short bios of the leadership people (owner, CEO, marketing, CFO, and others).

Sometimes you can read about the mission or the goal of a certain company or person.

Contact Us Page

Most sites need to have that section and there you can find their location, phone, and email. Sometimes they use a contact form too instead.

This page is important since it shows that a real person or business entity is related to the website.

Privacy Policy Page

The purpose of this page is to let the internet user know how the website owners handled their data. For example when the site visitors enter their card details, email or any other personal data.

Careers Page

If there is a company behind the site then on careers page it posts the latest job openings or the contact details of the hr responsible.

Blog Page

I know that I mentioned blogs as a type of website too but usually, even big corporate website has a blog page. They may want to communicate their opinions for certain things or comment on any major incident that recently happened.