What is a Static Page?

You may have wondered: what exactly is a static web page? This term is bandied about in cyberspace.

What’s a static page? Basically, a static page is a stand-alone page that is easily accessed through a titled tab. What this means is that it always appears on your site and does not become buried in your content. A tab always appears across your site, either along the top or within the sidebar, which, when clicked on, opens onto the static page.

Why Use Static Pages?

Why is using static web pages a good idea? What if you want all of your visitors to be able to access certain information? In the real world, businesses use the same methods to put information in front of their visitors. Have you ever stood outside of a restaurant and read the menu that was attached to the front door? The menu allowed you to access information before you even entered the building.

In like fashion, sites and blogs that use static pages, put important information in front of visitors. For example, the widely used publishing platform Blogger offers static pages functionality so that publishers can publish static information on stand-alone pages linked from their blogs. This allows them to highlight certain pages of information. If you’ve seen pages titled: Home, About, Contact or FAQs, you have no doubt seen static pages. These do not usually change much, whereas, in contrast, other site pages do change and new content may be added.

In the case of a blog, having static pages becomes even more important. Why? Blogs are designed so that the latest and freshest content appears at the top of the post page where site visitors will see it. This is great, as far as it goes, but what happens if you do not want a particular page to work its way down the page until it disappears and is archived? While yes, you can link to it across other pages or, if you’ve installed LinkWithin, visitors may see 3-4 related posts/thumbnails appearing at the foot of each blog post and might come across it that way, still, there are times that a static, stand-alone page is far more effective by dent of the fact that it appears where is it easily viewable and, more important, where it can be easily accessed.

Site visitors know that when they visit a particular site and are looking for specific information, they can find it on static web pages, the tabs/titles of which usually appear in a horizontal row towards the top or in a vertical row along the side, or, in some cases, at the bottom, depending on the site design.

Including static pages on your sites looks more professional and helps visitors to navigate different sections of your site. No visitor wants to have to hunt for information that should be obvious and readily accessible, such as how to contact you, your physical address, your business details, etc. Static pages could be said to be an index, of sorts, that allows visitors to instantly key in on critical information. If you’ve ever visited a site and have looked for the Contact Us feature, you will know what I’m talking about.

Website owners and bloggers do well to understand what static pages are and then use static web pages on their sites to best advantage and to offer better navigability and thus a better (more satisfying) visitor experience.

Blogger Static Pages

How to Create Static Pages–Blogger has now added static pages functionality.

WordPress Static Pages

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