Bikky Khosla | 13 May, 2014
Some time
ago online presence was not considered as an important factor by small
businesses. It was just an optional idea, something only large corporations
should care about. Nowadays, however, more and more small business owners are
getting aware of how useful it can be to promote their businesses. The reasons
are obvious; today with just about 15-18% of our population online India is
already the 3rd largest Internet user in the world after China & USA. The
number of customers doing their research online is increasing everyday and so
is the number of businesses going online. This in turn, has increased the
competition in the online arena, making it imperative for businesses to have
multiple websites to increase their chances to be found by more customers
online.
Having
multiple websites for a single business is beneficial in more than one way. It
provides the opportunity to promote different aspects of your business more
effectively. For example, if you have two different lines of product to offer,
it is better to have one small website for each of them. Is it impractical?
What if we just clearly spell out the different paths on a single website so
that every customer can easily find the information that applies to them? One
can do that, but still it makes more sense to have multiple websites to grab
visitors' attention exclusively and help them locate information easily.
Multiple
websites would be good for another reason -- when you want to run two different
marketing campaigns simultaneously, promote two different brands with different
pricing structures, or target two different markets with different price
sensitivity, a single website can hardly help. But what about costs? It is much
less costly than many business owners think. In fact, many a time maintaining a
few single page websites turns less costly than taking care of a single but
complicated website loaded with heavy content and graphics.
Some
people advocate going for several domain names and point them all to the same
website instead of making multiple websites. This can save a few hundred rupees
per year. But there seems to be no definitive answer on how this strategy
affects a website's search engine results -- positively or negatively, and
that's why I don't prefer it over the other option. You may consider registering
multiple domains for several reasons -- to prevent your competitors registering
a similar one or accommodate misspellings, but that should not be the excuse
for ignoring the need of multiple websites.
Buying
domain though is matter of few bucks only but as it safeguards your online
identity, hence it is of utmost importance to buy the same on your own name by
giving your own contact information so that its ownership stays with you. Trust
me; it's not tricky; it's as simple as keeping user name and password of your
email. Also domains should always be bought from ICANN accredited registrars as
these companies are accredited to sell domain names and as governed by ICANN
governing body they do not get involved in any malpractice which means a
client's interest will never be compromised either today or in future.
I invite
you all to share your opinions.