sally_in_wales
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How many websites are too many?At the moment I effectively have one 'commercial' website. trading as my own name, and with a very diverse range of products, services and freebies. I'm not unhappy with that in itself.
I think I need to set up a couple more though to market particular products to more targetted audiences. Trouble is, whilst a couple of extremely obvious examples spring to mind (plaguerats.co.uk to pimp the cat pharmaceuticals and some top secret in the pipeline stuff, a site to make the Scots bonnets and kilt hose more apparent and attractive to a certain 'overseas' market and so on), I can see several other possibilities and I'm struggling to determine when showcasing elements of the range in separate sites becomes a hinderance rather than a help.
Does anyone have any thoughts that might help me find a sensible middle ground, obviously each site needs maintaining and paying for, but I can really see that a streamlined, beautifully laid out small site will work bettr for some products than my current eclectic site does, though I think I'll probably always keep a central 'get it all here' site for those that know to look for 'me' rather than 'random product'.
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Chez
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I think that it's a good idea - I think it makes one come across as larger and more specialised that perhaps one is; which appeals to certain markets. And keeping the central 'you' site is also a good idea - you are effectively catering for two different mind-sets.
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RichardW
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How about a multi front ended site? Basicaly each product / type has its own domain & home page but is in reality part of a larger site. So each one would be a page or two only & have links to the others in the same group. Domains are cheap, hosting them wont cost any more than you are already paying (& if it does give me a shout) looking after them should be just as easy as looking after the big site. Infact I would drop the big site apart from as the portal to the other sites / pages.
Justme
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orangepippin
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One method that I use to determine whether a shop site is viable or not is to say "if this were my *only* website, does it have enough products to be a viable standalone showcase for this product range in this market?". If it does then there is a lot to be said for doing it as a separate site, backed by the pulling power of your central portal.
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sally_in_wales
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Thats great advice, thank you everyone. Whats the best way to do this? Should I up my current hosting (I'm with nativespace) to something that will handle multiple sites, or treat each one independantly and get a basic hosting package for each one?
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Fee
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Yep, I think to market your products well, pimp them on their own website, it makes SEO easier IMHO, and then it might be an idea to then send them to your current/central site to actually buy.
Get those domains bought up, even if you haven't made the decision on them for sure, you can link them to hosting later, and could redirect the domsin to your main site for the timebeing.
Regards hosting, how much do nativespace charge?
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sally_in_wales
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| Fee wrote: |
Regards hosting, how much do nativespace charge? |
Its £3.11 a month, which is fine for my current one site and their support is fantastic, any problems or questions they have resolved for me within minutes to date, but if I start getting multiple sites I probably need to look at their next level up which I think is £4.67 a month for 5 sites. I'm not all that clued up on the intricacies of juggling multiple sites though, I'm presuming its all done just like having one, but several times over.
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sally_in_wales
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ooh, I'm very excited, I have four shiny new domain names and some hosting to go with them. Now I just need a few quiet days to build the pages to go with them and I can unleash them on the world 
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Chez
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Yay! Speaking as someone who has been known to purchase domain names just because I liked them ... 
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vegplot
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| Justme wrote: | How about a multi front ended site? Basicaly each product / type has its own domain & home page but is in reality part of a larger site. So each one would be a page or two only & have links to the others in the same group. Domains are cheap, hosting them wont cost any more than you are already paying (& if it does give me a shout) looking after them should be just as easy as looking after the big site. Infact I would drop the big site apart from as the portal to the other sites / pages.
Justme |
I'd go along with this. Some CMS's allow you to have multiple domains each with it's own template. You host and manage one CMS portal which in itself is a host to more than one brand (sub website).
Most websites don't do not consume anywhere near their bandwidth/diskspace so it makes to go down this route rather than paying for multiple sites. You can do this with static sites as well (non-cms) you just need a hosting provider who knows how to redirect to folders based on domain name (host headers).
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Fee
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| Chez wrote: | | Yay! Speaking as someone who has been known to purchase domain names just because I liked them ... |
Tell me about it! 
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Barefoot Andrew
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Good luck with this Sally. I have hosting with 1&1 and I'd imagine your nativespace account & domains work similarly:
I have one 4GB hosting account, and I can create any folder structure I like therein. Each domain can be 'pointed' to a folder of my choosing. So for example, I might have:-
\some-folder-for-private-stuff
\my-first-website
\my-second-website
I would go into the domain control panel and set things so that 'www.my-first-website.co.uk' pointed to the 'my-first-website' folder. This means that I can have multiple, totally independent websites. The public visiting 'www.my-first-website.co.uk' can only see that website, and nothing else that's in my hosting space.
A.
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