Sometimes, your business covers different audiences, different customers. And in some cases, your one site is not enough.
If you sell clothing for children and adults, your one site can cater to both using categories for each. But if you sell audio and video equipment, your consumers will have different needs and expectations than your professional installers.
Other times the issue is location. If you sell worldwide, you’ll probably need sites catering to different countries. Audio-Technica does this when you go to their site.
Say you specialize in work shirts for construction workers. Your retail website is great for the average person looking to buy a few shirts for their work week.
You may also want to target companies looking to provide their staff with uniforms. Your retail site may not be the best option for them.
So how do you know when more than one site is needed?
The proactive approach is to start with your persona research. Identify who your customers are and what they need. Are you only selling direct or do you also wish to sell to distributors? Are you selling single pieces or will some of your customers need bulk pricing?
Next, consider how to satisfy each of your customers. Some of your customers simply need to find your product, select it, and check out. Great, that’s the basic e-commerce website.
Professional and consumer
If some of your customers require a bit more assistance, like professional installations, they need another layer of service. Do you want to use your e-commerce site for this or should it be separate?
One great example of this is hardware stores. Let’s look at the big two chains: Lowe’s and Home Depot. When you’re ready to check out, you head to the registers.
If you’re part of their professional services crowd, you have a separate register to use. This register tends to have more space in line because you’re more likely to carry large products and higher quantities.
Wholesale and retail
Wholesale versus retail can also be a big one. Your retail customer is buying one piece for their own use. Your website should pitch the product, maybe offer them a discount in exchange for an email registration.
Wholesale customers don’t need a 10% coupon to purchase one item. They don’t even need to be pitched per product. they need to ultimately believe in your brand as a whole and they need to know your margins are enough for them.
How much is this going to cost?
Let’s not freak out. This doesn’t mean you have to spend thousands of dollars on multiple websites. You have options.
These days, you can launch a great looking site for nothing if you know where to look.
You need one main site to represent you publicly. If you sell direct, this will be your main site.
Other sites may not need all the bells and whistles that your main site has. A landing page may be all you need. And for this, there are several options.
Landing page through your website builder:
If you use Wix, SquareSpace, or WordPress, you can easily add additional pages to your site. These pages can be left off the main menu and accessible only with direct links.
Landing page through your email marketing service:
Email services like Mailchimp and Hubspot give you the ability to create landing pages. There are several templates to choose from to deliver the page your customers expect.
Landing page through Carrd:
Carrd’s basic service is free. You can grab a template and use it to set up your single-page website launched with a Carrd URL.
Thanks to these options, there’s bound to be a way to set up experiences unique to your specialized target customers. You don’t have to rely on one website to appeal to everyone.
If you need additional content marketing help, you can reply to this message to set up an introductory call.
Your friend,
JC
