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Page Types are unique pages defined during the Discovery Phase that leverages both a content type and global/conditional components to create a unique user experience.

Content Types, such as a Basic Page, an Article Page, or a Person Page, are typically out of the box builds that don’t require custom work outside of styling and adding some sidebar components which add a degree of flexibility to their use cases.

Unique Page Types are different. These pages, although based on content types, have a wholly unique impact. Landing pages are a classic example. Rather than serving as a content delivery device, these pages are structured to have a specific user experience in mind and ‘layer’ related and unique components onto them to help achieve that experience.

Why are Page Types Important?

This is an important distinction during the Discovery process. During Discovery, it is assumed that unless a page has a specific wireframe or design composite associated with it, it’ll be an out of the box build. This means that whatever the CMS platform provides as the template for that page, is what gets built. This can become an issue if later, additional capabilities are added to that page. This puts the build team in the position of having to ‘improvise’ the page type and this can create quality issues.

In Discovery, if these pages have associated wireframes, design composites, and requirements documented in the information architecture, they can be built more expediently and efficiently. As a result, the expectations surrounding those pages is made more clear and concise.

There will always be additions to pages as site development continues to evolve. However, if there are certain business requirements that need to be achieved and unique page types can be leveraged to achieve them, extra effort should be made to document these pages so that they can evolve properly during the build.