Thread: Need opinion - multiple sites, or one site...

Our website currently sells lighting. We are expanding to offer furniture and accessories.

My intention was to create 3 separate stores, using the multi-store product, as this seems logical and tidy.

However, as we near the point of implementing this I am having second thoughts. This is for 2 reasons:

1) A user of one 'store' cannot carry their account, or shopping basket easily to another - to add furniture or accessories to a basket full of lighting wouldn't be possible, they'd have ot go and create another account, etc - basically obstacles would be presented to the user.

2) The 'new' stores would be starting from scratch from an SEO perspective, and the SEO work required would be trebled by having 3 sites...

So... what do you guys think?

I guess it really depends on what your domain name is.

A domain of lights.com would not work well selling these other items. However a domain of lightsandmore.com would be a better fit.

By the sounds of what you've provided, I'd recommend one store that encompasses all three areas of products. There are ways within one store to make each "niche" stand out as almost a separate branded section. The benefits from having one large site with all that great content (for SEO) are pretty big.

You also get the opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell across the different areas with one site, where as with three you'd have to rely strictly on sharing customer + purchase data and then doing e-mail marketing or other after-purchase touch campaigns.

Just my 2 cents