why have more than one website?

If you have a website that attempts to pitch or present too many unrelated products or services, put some thought into separating these out into micro-sites. (A micro site is just a smaller website that focuses on a few products / services)

Remember, a website is for it’s visitors, not for the person that owns it (I harp on about this quite a lot).

intelligent grouping is the key to successful websites

A website devoted to one (or a few very closely related) products or services can sometimes be a far more powerful selling environment then one that over diversifies.

A website focusing on a smaller category of products or services will give the following advantages:

Customers are more likely to find the information specifically relevant to them

Focused products/services websites allows you to create content and branding appropriate to that item. You can often end up with conflicting messages when you are trying to sell to many things.

In creating sites dedicated to a smaller group of subjects, it will be obvious where the gaps in your sales supporting content are. These can be missed in larger sites.

You have just a few seconds to convince a visitor they are in the right place. If your site doesn’t focus on the things that are important to them and communicate this quickly, you can bet your pet monkey that the next site in the Google listings will.

I have used this tactic very successfully for many years, and unlike many trends on the internet it is timeless as a concept. At the time of writing we launched another micro site for a business today.

This tactic is fiendishly valuable when you are using Pay Per Click marketing to promote the sale of a product or service. If you have ever researched the concept of landing pages, I guess you could consider using focused micro sites as the logical and ultimate extension of this.

OF COURSE this tactic will not suit all.

If you are heading down the organic route, you’ll probably find there is a stronger case to create one larger more powerful website.

Photos courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons license from users L.Marie