Website software is being updated everyday and new web platforms are coming up fast. In such a time, it can be quite difficult for site owners to select features for their site.

Therefore, here is an overview of the features that you can get.

Stores

These are used for selling products on the websites and these are also good interaction points for sale.

Catalogs

This is like a list or catalog. Such sites will provide you with listings of different products in various categories that you can purchase for some specific amount. Most often, you can use a shopping cart in order to make it easy for the customers to select more items.

Auctions

EBay is the best example of auctions. The visitors can bid on different items that they wish to purchase and the highest bid wins. There is a time limit on these auctions and sometimes they also provide a buy now option. This option will allow the bidder to stop the auction and pay some predetermined price for the item.

Forums

These are message boards. The visitors can come and post message here. This is also a great place to discuss some issue. Usually, forums have a theme on which like minded people come together and discuss, interact and talk.

You can post conversations, begin discussions, keep a track of your messages, send messages and do such things. If this is done in the right way then it will also provide enough content for the spiders of search engines. However, if no one is using the forum then it will only cause your site to look bad.

Articles

The articles present a concise and straight way for conveying information. They give the web surfers a solid reason to visit your site. Articles are a great way to attract the robots of search engines by providing quality content. In fact, SEO professionals will suggest you to add articles.

Directories

These are there for categorizing other websites, business, in fact for categorizing just about everything. While some directories like Yahoo! Are huge, other can be small yet specific limited to a specific target audience. Such smaller directories are useful if it includes ratings, recommendations, or editor reviews.

News

These sites will have articles about current issues and events. These sites will be often updated, usually several times a day and will have many search functions also in order to search their article archives. Audiences will keep returning to these sites. The only disadvantage is that you will have to update it very regularly.

Then there are the entertainment, eprint and such other features that are also very useful.