The Business of Software

What do you guys recommend, whether one should build separate  websites for different products or use just one umbrella website with different products having their own webpages.

My products don't belong to same category.

Thanks

I'd say use different websites if the products are unrelated. This would probably make your SEO easier.

I agree with Scott - use different sites for your products.  Unless of course your company has a strong brand equity of its own, in which case marketing your different products on a single site might create a lot of crossover traffic.

Then again, who says you can do both?  A company site could contain abbreviated versions of your other dedicated product sites.

Yep - this is exactly what I've done. Separate sites for different products and an umbrella 'company' site (once I come up with a name, anyway!)

- SEO is easier
- Adsense will target better
- You can collect better stats
- People can link to your product with just a top-level domain rather than domain/product or product.domain

I'm strongly considering targeting the same piece of software to different applications just for the marketing and clarity benefits. Same technology, different purposes. No-one needs to know that the only difference is targeted UI's!

+1 Ian

I'm doing the same thing. One backen code base, multiple front ends and nobody knows.

Your marketing will be dramatically sharper. And you're creating multiple assets/brands. The value of another brand alone will trump whatever incremental benefits you would get by adding to an umbrella brand.

I'd recommend different websites on different hosting providers.  You get added SEO benefits by having links to your product from different subnets increasing the value of those links.

I use 3 separate hosting providers and see some good results in cross linking.  An additional hosting plan should only cost $100-150 per year.

I agree also...use different websites and diversify unless you feel that you'd gain more by pooling your markets.

If you have 1 site, and submit 5 pads, you'll get 500-1000 unique links

if you have 5 sites and 5 pads, you'll get 2500-5000 unique links.

You have to remember that people buy software as much for you as for the product itself. If you have lots of separate sites it isn't as apparent that this new piece of software is from "that rather nice developer who always gives brilliant support".

If your products are related then offering discounted bundles of 2+ products is lucrative. But this would work better if you had a single website.