What Is a Website? Definition, How It Works, vs the Internet

The definition, including the official French one

Official French terminology says neither "web site" nor "internet site". The internet vocabulary published in the Journal officiel (France's official gazette) on December 8, 2002 uses the term site and defines it as: a set of documents and applications placed under the same authority and accessible over the web from the same universal address. Two details in that sentence matter. The idea of a single authority, which is what makes a site one site. And the inclusion of applications, which as early as 2002 blurred the line between a website and a web application.

The Larousse dictionary uses a more everyday wording: a set of web pages accessible via the internet on a server identified by an address.

The most rigorous definition is technical. In the MDN glossary, updated on January 23, 2026, a site is the set of pages served from the same registrable domain, meaning the public suffix plus the label just before it. So support.mozilla.org and developer.mozilla.org belong to the same site, mozilla.org, even though they are two different origins. This difference between site and origin drives very real behavior, especially for cookies.

Website, internet site, web page

These three terms do not mean the same thing, and everyday usage keeps the confusion alive.

• The internet is the infrastructure: the physical network of interconnected machines and the protocols that let them talk to each other.
• The web is one application running on that infrastructure, alongside others such as email.
• A website is therefore not necessarily on the internet. A corporate intranet is a website that is only accessible from an internal network. That case is exactly why the distinction between a website and an internet site exists.
• A web page is the unit of consultation: a document reachable through a unique URL, usually written in HTML.

In everyday conversation, website and internet site are interchangeable and nobody will correct you. In a project brief, being precise avoids costly misunderstandings.

What happens when you type an address

The full chain fits in five steps, documented by MDN.

1. DNS resolution. Your browser does not know where the domain name you typed lives. It asks the DNS, the internet's directory, which returns an IP address. Four servers take part in a full resolution: the recursive resolver, the root server, the top-level domain server and the authoritative name server.

2. The HTTP request. The browser opens a connection to that address and sends a GET request. HTTP is text-based, stateless and asymmetric: only the client can start the exchange.

3. The server response. The web server, which is both a machine and a piece of software, checks that a resource matches the requested URL. It returns the file, generates it on the fly, or returns an error code such as the famous 404.

4. Packet transfer. The response is split into packets, each with a header and a payload. They may travel along different paths before being reassembled.

5. Rendering. The browser parses the HTML, applies the CSS, runs the JavaScript and paints the page. This step determines perceived speed, and it is where most performance problems happen.

Static, dynamic, application

Three ways of working, which differ in both cost and use.

A static site serves ready-made files. The URL maps to a file returned by the server. It is fast, robust, cheap to host and enough for the vast majority of business websites.

A dynamic site generates content on demand, often from a database. That is what a CMS does when it assembles an article from fields stored separately. Modern platforms blur the line: they let you manage content dynamically, then publish static pages served by a content delivery network.

A web application is not something you read, it is something you use. Users log in, create and edit data, and that state persists between sessions. The line between a web app and a dynamic site is gradual, not formally defined, and no official source settles it.

Types of websites in practice

These categories are industry conventions, not formal definitions. They are still useful because they drive the budget.

• Brochure website: presents a business and generates contact requests. A few pages, no transactions.
• E-commerce website: sells online, with a catalog, cart and payment.
• Media site or blog: publishes regularly, which requires a CMS that is comfortable for writers.
• Landing page: a single page designed for one campaign and one action.
• One-page website: all the content on one page with anchor navigation, a format we cover in our article on the one-page website.

What the numbers say in 2026

A few sourced benchmarks, with the date they were collected. Web figures age fast and keep circulating long after they stop being true.

The last row is worth a closer look, because it contradicts a common reflex. In France, desktop still accounts for most web traffic, while mobile has just moved ahead worldwide. Designing mobile-first is still good practice, but testing only on mobile is a mistake if your audience is French and professional.

A note on method for CMS shares: W3Techs measures a sample of more than twenty million sites considered relevant, excluding parked domains and spam. These are not shares calculated across the entire web.

Hosting and cost

A site needs two things to exist publicly: a domain name, which is its address, and hosting, which is the server space where its files live.

Typical hosting prices range from €1 to €10 per month for shared hosting, €5 to €35 for a virtual private server, from €50 for a dedicated server and from €100 for cloud hosting. One point comparisons tend to forget: introductory prices go up at renewal, by enough to change the math over three years. Our guide to web hosting covers the plans and this pricing trap in detail.

For the build itself, the benchmark from La Fabrique du Net (a French platform that matches businesses with agencies), based on 1,312 real budgets collected in early July 2026, gives an overall median of €5,200, €3,500 for a brochure website and €10,000 for an e-commerce site. The breakdown by technology and type of provider is in our article on how much a website costs.

Where to start

The order that avoids costly rework is always the same. First the goal and the type of site. Then the site structure, because it shapes both navigation and SEO. Then the content, which always takes longer than planned. Technology comes last, and the choice of website building platform follows from everything before it, never the other way around.

The most common mistake is choosing the tool first. It produces sites that have to be rebuilt eighteen months later.

Our approach

Synqro is a Webflow Premium Partner agency that works with companies in Paris and across France. Our website design work starts with the site structure and the content, not the mockups, because that is where what the site will bring in gets decided.

For Garden Reclaimer, in e-commerce, we built a premium brochure website with custom 3D assets: a case where the type of site and the visual ambition were driven by the product positioning, not by an aesthetic preference. The details are in the Garden Reclaimer case study.

If you do not know yet which type of site fits your needs, tell us about your goal rather than the solution. Our Webflow agency page lays out the full method.