Multiple Websites

How many e-commerce sites are you running for your shop?

  • 1 site

    Votes: 34 66.7%

  • 2 sites

    Votes: 8 15.7%

  • 3 sites

    Votes: 4 7.8%

  • 4 or more

    Votes: 5 9.8%
  • Total voters
    51
  • Poll closed .
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CHR

CHR

Design matters
Nov 28, 2002
8,951
8,442
113
Anaheim
www.avantegardens.com
State / Prov
CA
If you are a florist that's running more than one e-commerce site, please take the time to read Five Reasons Why It's Better to be Big & Popular than Small & Niche from SEOmoz.

The author lists several good reasons why dividing up content can dilute your effectiveness, especially #2 - Multiple Sites Split the Benefits of Links and #5 Time & Energy Is Better Spent on a Single Property.

In my web travels, I'm running across florists with both TF and FTD hosted sites plus a non-shopping cart informational site and others to boot.

If all those sites are jammed with traffic, then you know they're working. But for 99%+ of florists, that's NOT the case.

In addition to the points on SEOmoz, there's also an annual cost of $1200 in just hosting fees for each WS site - plus the directory listing fees and receiving fees of $3/order. If you ditch one WS site, you'll still have the receiving fees but at least you'll save the monthly cost. (BTW, I hate per-order fees and don't have to pay them on my indy site.)

How to easily eliminate one or more without losing customer or traffic? Take the weakest domains and have them redirected to your strongest site. You'll keep all the folks that have bookmarked that URL (and aren't most of them there from your marketing anyway?)

I see florists struggling in the SERPS when they should be at or near the top of their cities - but they have links for their companies pointing to multiple domains so they've diluted their Page Rank.

Pick one e-commerce site, spiff up the 'About Us' page, add some of your own photos, list your hospitals, funeral homes and community projects and you'll get far, far better results than shotgunning with numerous web addresses.

If you aren't sure which site to ditch, post your question here and we'll try to help.
 
Just one ecommerce site for flowers, three sites overall - a wedding website and a wedding invitation & accessories website.
 
One Ecom site, two blogs, and contemplating another Ecom for "hardgoods" not flowers...would be a different name and link to each other.
 
Two sites--one for every day flowers, and one with wedding flowers/accessories. Plus one Florist Blog.
 
For those with multiple sites, I want to strongly encourage you to consider having them all under one domain. Why dilute your link power?

Think of it as having separate store fronts in different locations for brides, retail customers and those who want more information (multiple sites) vs. having different areas of your store for the different customers (one site). The second option allows the customer to get a better perspective on your whole business and there will be crossover traffic.

Ryan
 
I agree with Ryan 100%, except in our very specific case (same for Clay's funeral site).

For those with multiple sites, I want to strongly encourage you to consider having them all under one domain. Why dilute your link power?
Click to expand...

Because there's more to the world than link power. SEs are not the #1 referrer of traffic to our wedding website--direct traffic and links from forums (such as The Knot) are. I think the constant focus by many on SE rankings is not such a healty obsession when there are better ways to get directed traffic. When interested brides show up on our wedding site, I want it to be all weddings all the time--that's what they're looking for. The wedding blog alone averages 700-800 visits each day, of which about 150-200 are SE referrals. The rest are aggregators, e-mailed article links, clicks from the main site, etc.

Think of it as having separate store fronts in different locations for brides, retail customers and those who want more information (multiple sites) vs. having different areas of your store for the different customers (one site). The second option allows the customer to get a better perspective on your whole business and there will be crossover traffic.
Click to expand...

It also means clueless brides try to order bridal bouquets online and have them dropped shipped. We do drop ship accessories aroundthe country. Plus, it's also about appearance. On our flowers site, we play up the fact we're a local florist. On our weddings website, we want to give the impression we're a major player in the wedding accessories and invitations world, and THE top wedding florist in the area (second one we definately are). Tough to sell both ideas on the same website.

There is very little crossover between the every day flowers and the wedding business. This isn't something for everyone to try, but it works for us.
 
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Rich and Kathy's situation is definitely an exception. Like Rich says, their national site (for selling & shipping wedding accessories) is really a different 'store'. Of course, they can cross link, but the sites appeal to two distinct groups of consumers.

I have two sites, but only because TF couldn't handle wedding work well (and still doesn't) back when they hosted our e-commerce site. IMO custom wedding work needs an entirely different look and feel than same-day deliveries.

Now we're faced with having hundreds of pages and photos indexed from our wedding site so if we migrate everything over to a new section in our main site, it'll be like starting from scratch. :(

The point of this thread was really to prompt some of the shops that are paying for multiple e-commerce sites to consolidate since there's almost no benefit in running two or more, especially if they're both not being found in page 1 for their targeted search terms.
 
CHR said:
The point of this thread was really to prompt some of the shops that are paying for multiple e-commerce sites to consolidate since there's almost no benefit in running two or more, especially if they're both not being found in page 1 for their targeted search terms.
Click to expand...

I've often wondered if TF/FTD give sites to some of their members - I can't imagine paying the monthly fees to both places ... I know they do this for new shops that sign up for a promotional period, but I wondered if they do this on a continual basis for certain members. I can't imagine paying for both.
 
curious to feed fire

so if you have 5 or more sites does that make you an OG ? Whats the Diff. Or is it fighting for orders. Just curious... If xyz shop can give the consummer an option hell yea... Thats the only way to combat the madness. Exposure, exposure keep it up good post and dont quit retailers, its the only way to succeed in the web world. COMMITTMENT AND BEING PASSIONATE ABOUT OUR BUSINESS... This current world is about "ME" not family values as we grew up in. It's proven who has the best deal. Be non stop in marketing the ones who have chosen you to fulfill their needs. Make them come back. Make them buy from you and not the others stop @@@@@ing make a change. Sorry for being so kirt and to the point as some would say its just Hal
 
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so if you have 5 or more sites does that make you an OG ? Whats the Diff. Or is it fighting for orders. Just curious...
Click to expand...

I think the difference is when you create pages saying you deliver to a town in which you're not located.
 
I have 3, and they each have their own specialty and purpose.

I think I'd have 10 if I could handle all the updating, but time is finite. I'd like to appeal to all different types of consumers. I'm betting FTD does it for a very good reason and who can argue with their success? TF has at least dozens also with all their Joann Fabric/American Airlines/Mobil gas/ Sears/ on and on/ Flowerclub stuff. FTD pays beacoup millions to buy successful ones and don't just merge them into the mother ship. They all operate as quasi standalone sites.

Ever wonder about people like gifttree who have hundreds (at least)? They must have a master updater program that does it all in a swoop. Over my techno head I'm afraid.

opinions vary...
 
RJD said:
I agree with Ryan 100%, except in our very specific case (same for Clay's funeral site).



Because there's more to the world than link power. SEs are not the #1 referrer of traffic to our wedding website--direct traffic and links from forums (such as The Knot) are. I think the constant focus by many on SE rankings is not such a healty obsession when there are better ways to get directed traffic. When interested brides show up on our wedding site, I want it to be all weddings all the time--that's what they're looking for. The wedding blog alone averages 700-800 visits each day, of which about 150-200 are SE referrals. The rest are aggregators, e-mailed article links, clicks from the main site, etc.



It also means clueless brides try to order bridal bouquets online and have them dropped shipped. We do drop ship accessories aroundthe country. Plus, it's also about appearance. On our flowers site, we play up the fact we're a local florist. On our weddings website, we want to give the impression we're a major player in the wedding accessories and invitations world, and THE top wedding florist in the area (second one we definately are). Tough to sell both ideas on the same website.

There is very little crossover between the every day flowers and the wedding business. This isn't something for everyone to try, but it works for us.
Click to expand...
I understand the idea of wanting to target different customers and present a different look/feel. It's an approach I've taken several times over the years.

If I had to do it over again I'd make each site a separate section of the same site, under the same domain name, and have the other domain names 301 to the subsections.

Something like this:
www.exampleflorist.com for retail customers
www.exampleweddings.com would 301 to www.exampleflorist.com/weddings
www.examplefunerals.com would 301 to www.exampleflorist.com/funerals

This allows the best of all worlds.

But ... I won't argue with Rich's success :)

Ryan
 
I have 256 URLS and 15 websites which filter into 3 shopping carts. About 250 of those URL's are all pointed to one website and shopping cart. I have 3 holiday websites that lie dormant most of the year without a shopping cart until the final days. At that time I connect a temporary shopping cart.

There's a lot of details between the lines, but the gist is I place in the top spots (i.e. Google of course) for most of the good general holiday terms and my cities.
 
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Mac said:
I have 256 URLS and 15 websites which filter into 3 shopping carts. About 250 of those URL's are all pointed to one website and shopping cart. I have 3 holiday websites that lie dormant most of the year without a shopping cart until the final days. At that time I connect a temporary shopping cart.

There's a lot of details between the lines, but the gist is I place in the top spots (i.e. Google of course) for most of the good general holiday terms and my cities.
Click to expand...

Pretty good point Mac - since there are 10 page 1 listings for my city - I'd love to be in all 10 of them.

With different websites you can avoid duplicate content, with a lot of work.

Ever wish there were more hours in the day?
 
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Wow. It's curious that this thread got rated a 'one star'. :(

A few of you guys that run multiple websites are serious about web mastering, administer your own SEO, have very old domains (which search engines like a lot), and/or use the multiple domains to order gather.

IMO that is not what the majority of B&M shops are doing.

Yes, you can crowd out the competition if you SEO ten sites for the same terms and are really good at it. But I doubt the 'victory' would last long. SEs are getting better and better about sniffing out common ownership and looking at interlinking.

Gifttree has been penalized (actually banned) in the past so don't think they 'get away' with spamming SEs with jillions of domains. How often do you see one of their doorway sites rank for anything important? I generally see them in PPCs trying to look like they're local. They have to buy their way into city keywords.

Florists with effective local sites can get the traffic for free if they just do a good job on one domain (or more) - and I don't see most accomplishing that.

I don't want to link to examples but I have seen, over and over, shops with both TF and FTD sites that are nowhere to be found because they lack unique content, lack sufficient inbound links and have newer domains.

I've spent a lot of volunteer time (far too much time, really) trying to help real florist FCers to improve their positions in organic search for their cities.

Some have succeeded but many have not. By encouraging multiple domains without explaining the age-of-site issues and amount of work needed, I'm afraid this thread has now made the issue confusing to the florists who need the help most.

I'm sorry I started it.
 
In my case, no two websites come up for the same key phrase as the focus is different for each site. e.g. 1) funeral related 2) rose related 3) balloon related 4) christmas related 5) thanksgiving related 6) V-Day related 7) M-Day related; and so on.....

No Dup. content.
 
David said:
I'm glad you did and found it interesting. I learned something from Ryan and I am sure lots of others did also.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you did also - You were right as it applied to some/many.

So were the other opinions and we know that

opinions vary.....


PS - don't we need varying opinions?
 
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