Can or should a company have two websites?

Soldato
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What are your opinions on a company having two websites. Both advertising the same thing. However one of the websites is a lower standard than the other.

The obvious answer is to remove the rubbish one. However. What effects would having both live be? Why is this wrong and why shouldn't it be done?

If you disagree, please explain why?

Thanks very much for any responses.
 
Well I can answer from professional experience.

Our company has two websites as we produce a huge range of products and the decision was taken (not by me I might add) to split the branding online, so we now have two websites for one company.

In our case it has been a mistake. For one, you risk your customers not knowing about one or the other website, it is a lot more hassle to updates stockists etc on 2 websites as opposed to one, it can create confusion among customers and you risk one site having far more traffic than the other.

Our traffic for our main site is about 10 times higher than the second one - a massive error and frankly an amateurish mistake by a manager who wasn't smart enough to do the job (they're now gone).

So from a real world standpoint, it hasn't worked and I'm now having to look into ways of integrating the two back into one again.

.
 
1 site. Always 1.

It's more effective to have microsites hanging off directories of your main site, eg: www.mycompany.com/awesome-product.

If you absolutely must have other microsites on different urls to highlight other products or services you're offering then you need to:

1) Always make sure you have big calls to action to point people back at your main site.
2) Heavily SEO the second site, but only for whatever it's being used to promote. You don't want the secondary site being indexed above the main site for your common search terms (ie, company name, or business sector).
 
1 site. Always 1.

It's more effective to have microsites hanging off directories of your main site, eg: www.mycompany.com/awesome-product.

If you absolutely must have other microsites on different urls to highlight other products or services you're offering then you need to:

1) Always make sure you have big calls to action to point people back at your main site.
2) Heavily SEO the second site, but only for whatever it's being used to promote. You don't want the secondary site being indexed above the main site for your common search terms (ie, company name, or business sector).

A Sensible Answer in GD? i never thought it possible! :)
Good advice though, pretty much spot on i think.
 
We have two sites, with different pricing and different branding.

It was mainly for experimentation with advertising, but both remain live and there are no plans to remove the lesser used brand.
 
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