6 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
6 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Two websites or one website to reach the audience?

by lizzy90
5 replies
  • ECOMMERCE
    • |
Hi there,

I've had a UK .co.uk website for almost 10 years, which does well and is where most of our traffic and orders comes from.

I've also had a .com for north american users for the past 3 years, basically to rank better over there (as i guess US sites do better than UK sites for the same product in their country)

The content on the .com is written in american english, and it's all unique content and i basically wanted our ecommerce store to do well over there as opposed to just offering USD as an option on our UK site and shipping from the UK.

The .com does siginficantly worse, and i'm starting to think having 2 websites is more work to manage than its worth.

I just wondered if you thought it would be best to just scrap the .com site and just redirect it to the UK site and offer USD as a currency, or you still feel offering multiple sites is the best approach to reach people in their country rather than generating it all from one?

Again the main point was to reach as many people as possible in each country for said product. The audience in the US is more aware of this product too, hence the reason to expand over there 3 years ago with a fresh site.

Any advice would be greatly welcome.

Lizzy
#audience #reach #website #websites
Avatar of Unregistered
  • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
    What I understand from your post is that your business is based in the UK from where you ship all your products. If that's the case, one reason why your US site isn't doing so well could be the shipping costs and/or the delivery times.

    You don't say what product(s) you offer, just that the US audience is more aware of them. If there's a reason to buy these products from the UK, rather than a local supplier, it wouldn't matter so much about having a US website, as most potential buyers would be willing to shop at the UK site. Otherwise, I don't know why anyone in the US would choose to order from a UK company.

    It's probably a good idea to display local currencies on your UK site, even though most payment processors convert sales to the local currency anyway.
    Signature


    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11554293].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Would have to agree with Donovan....

    But to clarify, where exactly does the US orders ship from? The US or the UK?

    My question would have to do with servers. Are both hosted by the same company? I would ensure that they are on separate hosting accounts preferably with the .com being on a hosting program that the server is based in the States. I would also ensure that on the hosting account you have the .com you do not have a co-hosted .co.uk site.
    Signature
    Success is an ACT not an idea
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11554302].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Andrii Ozemko
    It depends on your business niche and product. If it is internet market with many products, it would be expensive to support two different websites. So, in this case I would say one website (domain) is better.
    At the same time, if you sell not many products, website is not too big and you use SEO to get traffic, I would prefer to stay with 2 domains and websites. In this case you can select Country for each domain in Google Webmaster Tools. You can create specific content for each region, which helps from SEO point of view. But again, you need to avoid content duplication, it can be painful.
    Signature
    Smart SEO Auditor - crawler for On-Page SEO audit. Designed for experienced and beginning SEO specialists, webmasters and website owners. Download Free!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11554402].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author adamray123
    According to me, to reach the audience get two websites. The more the websites more will be the audience.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11596478].message }}
Avatar of Unregistered

Trending Topics