Breaking a site up into separate sites

[Foamcow]

I'm working on a rebuild of an existing site and one of the things I am considering is breaking the site up into a number of smaller sites.

My reasoning for this is as follows:
The business provides similar services to a number of different market sectors.
Some of these sectors might be put off by this fact. For instance, private individuals may feel that the business is too big to worry about them as they also deal with large, Commercial clients.

So I'm planning on making an "umbrella" site containing the bulk of company information then "sattellite" sites for each sector with just information pertaining to that market.

There will be some common content, but on the whole the information on each site will be unique to that sector. Site structure would probably be the same or at least very similar.

What are your thoughts on doing this?

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[feherke]

Hi

In what is written the original site ? Is it static HTML or dynamically generated by CGI ?

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[Foamcow]

That's not an issue really.

There is a mix of dynamic and static content, but at the moment the IA of the site is pretty bad so it's all hard to find!

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[ChrisHunt]

I think I'd be wary of creating wholly seperate sites for each aspect of the organisation, unless they market themselves as a collection of seperate companies - Acme Mobile, Acme Records, Acme Trains, etc.

If it's one company with a lot of different strings to its bow, I think I'd try to reflect that by putting everything into the same site. Maybe give each market area its own subdomain pointing to a distinct area of the site - mobile.acme.com etc. These subsites could be differentiated from the shared core pages by different colours, header graphics etc. It can be tricky to balance a consistent look across the site with sufficient differentiation of the subsites, but I'm sure you're up to the task.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[Foamcow]

Hmm interesting.
That is why I am undecided as the best approach.

Basically the company offers the same services but on different scales.

My reasoning for breaking things up was that a private individual may feel they won't be getting the same treatment as a large company.

But the reasoning behind your argument also makes sense.


You wouldn't reccommend creating 1 site with each section accessible via a different domain name?
So the structure might be

Main Home -> Sectional Homepage -> Content pages

With the main domain pointing at "Main Home" and different domain names pointing at each section (which would also be accessible through main domain).

My gut feeling says that this would be a Bad Idea (tm), but I can see benefits when promoting the company in specific market sectors. It's going to be simpler to promote

http://www.mycompanymysector.com

than

http://www.mycompany.com/mysector

(or would it?!)

I'm not keen on subdomains, can't really see the point and they are still an obscurity to "most" users.

Gah! So many options!

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[ChrisHirst]

For online promotion one site wins every time for me

N sites =
N times the work to put together
N times the work to build content for

and more importantly!

N times the Link building required.

1 well structured site can often generate more than enough link pop of it's own to rank for most subjects.

However there is nothing to stop you doing both, You can use the shorter hostnames for offline promotion and point these into the section folders.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Foamcow]

Yep, after further thought and scribbilings I am reccomending that we build 1, well structured site.

There may be the need for another site later as one of the business areas is being branded in it's own right and, in my understanding, doesn't fit with the others.

Cheers

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[sysadmin42]

There's a book called the "22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" (on Amazon) that has really helped me out a lot in marketing- websites included.

There are two laws in there that come to mind:

- Law of the mind: Basically, whatever the public thinks about when they hear your name is what they'll remember. i.e. IBM started out with BIG computers like mainframes. That's what people knew. Then they tried PC's and failed. They realized their mistake and are now back on the server side of things.

- Law of line extension: i.e. Pepsi is Pepsi. That's what they make. Then they make Pepsi Clear- trying to extend their product line. They lost money on the project.

These two laws work together pretty well- and the rest of the book is just as helpful- but as far as a website is concerned, it's very easy to put too much information in there and confuse your visitors.

I am all for the breaking up of the site if that's the case.