Skip to main content

Should I have more than one website?

Nigel Temple

Nigel Temple

This is an interesting question, which comes up during my internet marketing seminars. For a decade, I only had one website (www.nigeltemple.com). Now we run three websites.

There are arguments in favour of both approaches. On the one hand, having a single website can certainly be time consuming, never mind more than one! Assuming that you have a CMS (Content Management System), you should be spending time on your website every week (and some would argue, every day).

If you serve different market segments, there is a case for having separate sites. This may also be true if you wish to focus on a particular product, service or geographical market. On the homepage, you can then really go to town on specific messages, offers, keywords etc.

In my case, from 1999 onwards, I regularly updated my site. For example, I experimented with the meta data, added new pages, wrote articles, promoted my events, uploaded images and inserted links to other websites.

Subsequently, we launched www.totosites.com our website development arm. Within this site, we discuss internet marketing issues. Marketing strategy and tactics are now served by www.marketingcompass.co.uk – which is also a social networking site for small business owners who are interested in ‘all things marketing’.

I have found that having more than one site gives me more opportunities to promote different products / services. An interesting benefit is that I can ‘cross promote’ between the sites. (Only having one site can become quite complicated, especailly if you do several things!)

Finally, a new website can take advantage of the latest technology. For example, an online Content Management System, which is Google friendly. Technology keeps on moving forward, doesn’t it? So perhaps now is the time to embrace some of the cool new functionality and use it to attract some more customers!

One Comment

  • Kyle Newman says:

    Great article Nigel. This is a question I have deliberated over many times myself and frequently discuss with my business coaching clients. As you mention a website should generally be targeted towards a particular target market and/or product range. If it has too broad a market focus it usually tends not to deliver solid results.

    Another approach that can work quite well in some situations is website segmentation. Eg: If you have two or three target markets for related products, then you can segment traffic at the point of entry/home page into dedicated to that market and then direct targeted traffic to landing pages with that site segment. Eg; home page might have an image/graphic/large text has says ‘If you’re an agency or large organisation click here’ and another saying ‘If you’re a small business owner click here’ – for a related product/service but for two different target markets.

    I’ve used both to good effect. I have a segmented website set-up for one of my businesses, as the target market is largely the same, but the range of services offered is segmented http://www.movebeyond.net, plus I also have two separate websites for two other businesses as they have different markets and service offerings. I’ve then linked them all together through a portal website http://www.movebeyondgroup.com which I mostly use as a common referral point for my online networking profiles on sites like Ecademy and 4Networking so people can see everything we offer and link through to the most appropriate business/service for them.

    There are pro’s and con’s to having several websites, but I always try and think about it from the customers/prospects perspective and what makes most sense for them.

    Looking forward to more great content Nigel! Kyle

Leave a Reply