One website or multiple

I would say if all the products are similar, and for the same niche of people, having them under one website is great. I would personally have separate websites if I was offering different types of products though. Just my two cents.

I have had dozens of domains. Which meant I had to send people to dozens of different sites to find out about the dozens of products I was selling. Soon enough I had dozens of blogs - dozens of social media accounts - dozens of headaches.

Now I have One domain - One social media account - One product line - One blog - One business - One brand.

It's just easier. It also helps to be consistent with your marketing.

That's my two cents.

In the past, having multiple websites (that were all cleverly linked together) would be great for SEO purposes.
However today having one/Authority-type Website is better. And like Declan said, it's easier to manage. : )

2C.

Depends on the products. If you have a site that sells fishing equipment it would probably not work well to add womens lingerie

al

Hey there, to start by answering your question there might several reasons for an entrepreneur to have different websites and branding for, I guess, similar products. The number one reason I would do this and thus keep separated administrations as well, would be in prevision to eventually sell them to third parties.

Many entrepreneurs also drive several different niches, often absolutely unrelated, so for some good reasons they may not want to mix unrelated messages to those different different audiences with different interests. Interests that sometimes can even be total opposites.

It's obviously true that it is much easier to administrate all your things under one roof, however one might always prefer to offer a different line of products, though similar and related, from a different website and still administrate everything under one roof. Nowadays, with modern technologies that's become much easier to do. For example, you could have 2-3 websites selling different products and services, and managing your lists and sales, and membership level, payment processing, and product delivery from one centralised center.

It all depends on how you set things up, according to what you want to accomplish. And so, it also depends on how well you know about the existing possibilities and / or also who you talk to.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Andy

It obviously depends on the niche/market, but it's quite possible your competitor is targeting separate sections of the same (broader) market. For example, one brand could target the bargain-hunters while another could venture up market. Or the brands could be split by their age or other demographic target markets.

This is probably more common that you realize, especially in larger niches. However, to be effective, the brands would have to appear unconnected. The fact that you know about your competitor's 3 separate sites suggests either you've done some deep digging, or they haven't quite got it right.

Thanks for all the replies. It's given me some things to think about. After looking a bit further into the competitor in question I can kind of see why they have done it. One website straight up sells the products while the other two are all built around contacting them for a quote on larger orders, I think for me it will be better to build out my products from the same website but I guess it depends on how you want to market things.

Aside from to convenience of managing a single website, it is also easier to market. Instead of having different websites, invest your time in marketing instead.

Yes I have come across some companies who prefer multiple websites for same service/product. Some are looking to target each website for different country and some probably want to do more sales for the same product under different brands

Personally, concentrating all of your time and effort into a single website will allow you to build a better site.

Depend on website it may differs but you have 3 website in single website ,It will took some years also so split to different website to get more traffic for each website .

It depends on your products

The consensus is multiple websites = multiple streams of income.

One website. I don't know what exactly your product is but if they are all linked and niche related then essentially you could up-selling your main product. Lets say your main product is a cigar cutter. You can sell the cigar cutter but have add-ons like a cigar case, a humidor, etc. With the example i've given it would be pretty silly to send people to a different site just for those items. Especially when they could probably find someone selling all of those items in one place a "one stop shop". Having them all in once places allows you to make bundles as well.

Hi, If you don't have multiple services or products to promote, then one website is enough as both needs time to manage and maintain charges also requires for online visibility.

There could be many reasons, but some reasons could be that there are so many products on the one website that it becomes difficult to maintain a user-friendly navigation system, plus even though some products are related and go together putting them all on one website might turn it from a finely-niched website into one that's a bit too broad for the owner's liking.

HTH

If it makes you profit create a new one and hite somebody who will take care of both
Thats how we do it.

chuckholmes had a great point: If you have different types of customers, get different domains IMO. If you have complimentary products appealing to a single type of customer then one authority website will do.

We have around 140 domain names (not all in use yet) so you can guess what my answer will be. But we work in a fairly different way to others.

With affiliate marketing we set up what we call SuperStores (or Malls) on one domain, then they hold multiple stores/shops (each on their own domain name) within.

I'v given this example before of one of my Daughters sites for the music industry. So she has her Superstore then within that she has a number of Amazon stores (Guitars, Keyboards, Drums, Recording Equipment, etc. plus other related stores such as a Poster store. Then within the SuperStore she also has other music related affiliate offers from within Clickbank, like Learn to play Guitar, Set Up Your own Recording Studio, and so on. Then we also have services that we offer to musicians such as promotional services. so those websites reside in the SuperStore too. It's really a one stop shopping experience for musicians but they can just look in specific stores that are of interest to them. Another advantage is the huge product range she can offer, more than 100,000 products just in the Amazon Stores, so leaves any local music shop for dead. We do the same for other interests such as a Superstore for women. We can then promote the SuperStore or specific stores.

We use the same structure for our Agency, within the main Agency website we have individual websites for each service we offer. This allows us to go into greater detail on each service then if we were trying to combine them all into one website.

Cheers
Lindy

It depends on the product and the market.

The reason that they have 3 different websites is because they're targeting three different markets. With each website tailored to attract and address the needs of each market segment.

I do not think that your competitor is comfortable with all this. When you have a lot of sites for everything you need to monitor and update. It is better to have one site, but you will be confident in it and everything will be at the highest level there.

In my opinion, they just want to target to the different segmentation for different customers.
High price site targeting the rich people, or something like that.

Thanks again for all the input. I've decided to do a little of both, there are some products that are easy upsells to existing customers that should fall within my current website, I'll target those first. I'll then start a second website that will target a different audience and I think will work better as a stand alone site.

I think my competitor has gone a little overboard with what I now know is 4 websites and two of them seem to be doing the same thing, as far as I can tell they are essentially competing against themselves which make no sense to me at all.

I sounds like you competitor is split testing those website to see which one brings in more revenue.

A lot of successful marketers do that. Now, I am not telling you to do the same. Just saying.


Stay cool and successful...

Managing different accounts is stressful. If the products are not so differentiated, don't try to have more than one website. It will be easier to manage and monitor one website than a multiple of them.

One reason to have seperate websites is to keep things simple for the buyer. If there are too many options on one website, the buyer will have to work too hard to make a decision. The last thing you want to do is frustrate your visitors.

That being said, I think having 3 or 4 options together can work if they are structured properly. For example, start with the lowest cost product then guide the customer along to the higher cost product. Be sure to showcase the benefits of each to make it easy for the customer to compare them.

It all depends on how they choose to run their business. If you branch out into have similar websites also, are you willing to do EVERYTHING that your particular is doing to make their business model work?

It depends upon your needs. If you think multiple websites makes sense for your situation, go for it but for me having one website can help you focus on one thing.

if a person is running two different business then surely he/she have 2 domains. your work will become double and time too.... single site will let you to build trust more easily.

In my opinion having all these products under one website is more feasible. You can concentrate all your SEO, advertising campaigns etc on just 1 site instead of 3.

You should focus on one website instead and give 100% to that.

Now a days, Google prefer and rank sites with good DA. You must have notice that brand or huge websites/portals are eating all the top positions so this is the benefit cover all products under one website however sometimes it's good to differentiate products of different brands under different websites and in this way if user is not satisfied with your one website then you're offering your second website to same user hence not letting GO.


So think before you decide on your strategy!