Building microsites or multiple cross branded sites

If you have diverse product lines, building multiple stores or "microsites" is something you can do to expand your online exposure.

With ShopFactory Gold, you have the ability to build multiple stores. You can build full alternate versions of your main store with unlimited products, or smaller microsites with focus products. The benefit is you can quickly build different themes and designs for each store with a different look. You can also save out a copy of your main site, change the theme design, and/or strip it down for the focus products by removing other product lines. This will save you a great deal of time when building microsites.

Microsites pay big dividends when using them for a focused product line. Studies show that a smaller site with a straight forward message and products can lead to quicker sales. They also increase awareness of a particular brand or product by removing the clutter associated with bigger online stores.

The other benefit is the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is easier to do since you only have one product brand or line for the search engines to focus on. You can optimize each microsite with highly specific content, products and keywords to help drive the microsite traffic.

As one example, say you sell coffee makers. One particular line of coffee makers doesn't sell well on your main site because of SEO traffic issues. You can build a smaller store with a keyword rich domain name related to that product brand, and build traffic specific to the microsite. This will bring in new sales, and traffic from visitors specifically looking for that brand of product(s) — without distracting them with other products. Check with your brand manufacturer first to ensure you're able to do this with their products, if you are reselling though.

Big name brand manufacturers have been utilizing this practice for years. And, more of them are doing it since some sites rank higher than others at different times on search engines. This is due to regular search algorithm updates which can affect rankings on a monthly basis.

Another benefit to doing this kind of site is — if at one point in time one of your sites drops in ranking, the other site may pick-up the lost traffic. So in the end your traffic and sales don't suffer. If you do it right — both sites will rank high on the search engines and draw in traffic for different keywords and content. They may overlap in some cases — but you can build each site with different optimization tactics to fill in gaps where each site is ranking low.