5 Useful Single Purpose Websites and How They Are Changing the Online Experience

Over the past year, we’ve seen many more single purpose sites popping up. Some are great from a design perspective – they look really cool, but don’t really have a point to them – while others are, to be frank, ugly, but delightfully user friendly. Though they are often created on a whim, a single purpose site can ultimately be a clever marketing tool to get more eyes on your business and grow a brand’s customer base.

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A few of our favorites include the following:

Howsecureismypassword.net

This site tells you how long it would take for a hacker to guess your password based on the current combination of letters and numbers you have. The goal is to use this information to modify your weakest passwords and make them harder to crack. Internet safety is a huge priority these days. A weak password is like having a smoke alarm with old batteries – not worth the risk.

Whatismyip.org

Whether you’re setting up new office equipment and need to enter your IP address (I recently had to do this to get my wireless printer up and running), or you simply want to know what IP you’re on, whatismyip.org is the easiest way to do that. There also exists the site whatismyip.com, which offers useful information about IP addresses in general. The .org site is the simplest version of the tool. It’s not pretty, but it’s simple and reliable.

Isthestockmarketopen.net

This is a site we worked on with a client and we’re pretty pleased with the way it turned out. It’s nothing fancy – just a simple question answered depending on a user’s location. Sites like these can be a great way to improve a brand’s presence and engage their target audience. For example, a financial services company wants to stay top of mind for traders and financial professionals. A single purpose website like this doesn’t take much time to launch and can complement the overall message of the business nicely. It’s an effective form of digital branding. Even if you’re not directly involved in finance, if you’ve ever wondered if the stock market was open, this site is a good place to get started.

LMGTFY.com

When your friend asks you a question that is better answered by Google, LMGTFY (Let Me Google That For You) is possibly the snarkiest and most passive-aggressive way to respond. Let Me Google That For You allows you to enter a search query for your friend’s question and provides you with a link to share with them that shows a clip of you googling the question on their behalf.

Dogeweather.com

Dogeweather.com is a single purpose site based off of the doge memes made popular on Tumblr and Reddit. The site takes your location into account and reveals the current temperature along with a description of the weather in the comic sans font associated with the meme. Today, for example, it says “wow, heavy snow” along with phases like “such soft” and “much shiny”. If you’re bored of checking the weather on official meteorology sites, dogeweather is a nice change of pace. This is another example of a single purpose site that could align nicely with a business – depending on the industry. If you’re in retail and you primarily sell outerwear, a single purpose site that lets a visitor know when the weather is going to dip below freezing could be a fun way to engage customers and boost sales. Of course, that’s just one example, but the possibilities are endless. Single purpose sites offer plenty of opportunities to appeal to the customer and amp up a company’s online presence.

The five single purpose websites listed above are just a few that we enjoy. Are there other favorites out there?

About Kat Haselkorn

Declared the "Social Media Guru" by the Washington Post, Kat has significantly increased the online presence of brands through customized social media campaigns and innovative content marketing techniques. Kat is a featured writer for The Huffington Post and her work has appeared in Elite Daily, Buzzfeed, Yahoo!, Jezebel, The Washington Post, and many other high-profile publications. Kat holds a B.A. in Psychology with Honors from The University of Chicago.