4 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
4 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

overdoing niche sites?

by skishyFish
3 replies
  • ECOMMERCE
    • |
Hello. I work for a small company we will call ABC Co. that manufactures netting and padding. As you can imagine, netting can have various markets - aquaculture/fishing, sports (golf driving ranges, batting cages, etc), agriculture, and more. Currently, ABC Co. has 4 primary websites that have different DBA names as well as separate branding and domains. 3 of these sites are for different sport markets - there's a baseball site, a golf site, an aquaculture site, and a padding site. The baseball, golf, and padding sites are ecommerce driven with click to buy products.

K that's the background. It has been common practice here, that whenever we get a new product, we name it and create a new website for it. For example, we have the new hot product Blue Widget, so we grab up bluewidget.com, put a simple website and point to one of the ecommerce sites to buy it. I've wondered if this is the right way to do this. I've been told the idea is to create confidence just in case the person who sees Blue Widgets on the ecommerce site wants to do some research and oh look Blue Widget has it's own website, so it must be credible. If most people are going to find the Blue Widget on the ecommerce site anyway, my question is, why create all these extra sites and brands for such specific items, when we could just use Blue Widget to strengthen the existing ecommerce site. Why spread awareness out to all these different mini brands when really they are just a mask? To be clear, it's not the sites for the different markets I'm questioning..if we already have golfstuff.com and come out with a new product for that site, is it really a good idea to create a new site for one product that we sell on golfstuff.com?

Sorry this was lengthy, I wasn't sure how to explain it without giving the background. I'd love to discuss this with somebody though!
#ecommerce #micro sites #niche #niche sites #overdoing #sites
  • Profile picture of the author jumbo1
    If the product is a new brand, then yes you better make a new website for it, it gives it more value... but you shouldn't forget to link it to your main website and TELL YOU CUSTOMERS about it...

    You certainly already have a list of people who previously bought from you, right? Shoot them a newsletter and let them know about that new brand with the new website that you have..
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9212370].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author kjamesnv
      Originally Posted by jumbo1 View Post

      If the product is a new brand, then yes you better make a new website for it, it gives it more value... but you shouldn't forget to link it to your main website and TELL YOU CUSTOMERS about it...
      .
      I disagree. Unless there is a specific reason to have a separate site then just add it to your other site(s). If you set up your SEO properly customers will be equally likely to find it and perhaps even more so when they are shopping for other items. Plus you will have a better opportunity to upsell and cross sell other items by having them on a site with other merchandise.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9212416].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author SmallRevolution
        Think of building an eCommerce store like pushing an elephant up a hill. Would you rather do this once, or many times?

        kjamesnv is correct.

        When you have momentum in one store you can use that to widen your offering. It is a matter of re-structuring your navigation to allow customers to browse by industry.

        We have done this with our own store - gazebosaustralia.com.au. We started out selling just gazebos and have now branched out into many other products such as sail cloths, umbrellas, parts and accessories.

        Our domain name is not ideal for selling shade cloths, but this hasn't really hindered our growth. We create good quality content on the site and this naturally attracts the search engines and then we make sales.

        Rather than setting up an entirely new eCommerce system each time I would suggest that you make info-sites on the new domains. However, be very careful that they add true value for readers, not just spammy articles and behaving like doorway pages.

        If you have those domain names, with good quality content and traffic, then you can reserve your decision to create separate stores at a later date. Good insurance policy!

        I've also found that our stores with 400+ products tend to do much better in Google's organic search results. They seem to gain traction much faster - no doubt because there is a lot more content on the product topic.

        So, if you are making separate sites for every product then your store will be limited to perhaps 20 to 30 pages at most? (I'm just guessing.)
        Signature

        Founder of SmallRevolution.com
        Build your own online store, step by step.

        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9212780].message }}

Trending Topics