Several Product Lines - Several Shops?

[Diggerboy]

Hi all,

Many thanks to all contributors on my previous oscommerce thread. Time spent battling with oscommerce has give me invaluable insight to it's workings.

I've been uncomfortable with attempting to line-up various product ranges on the one site for some time, and need some input about how other people go about it.

I'm hoping to launch 4 product lines in the next couple of months, all of them basically in the automotive/hardware genre, but I'm starting to wonder if they should all have their own branded shop front. It's not like it a hugely expensive exercise to get 4 oscommerce shops running, and I just feel it would help focus me and my customers, particularly when it comes to PPC advertising, SEO etc.

However, my shop as it stands has two of the four lines listed, "under one roof" - and I sort of feel this also has it's merits.

Apologies for perhaps not fleshing-out this question completely, but opinions welcome from anyone with experience of running multiple shops or selling numerous non- or tenuously related products.

Cheers,
Conor

[RayB]

It depends how closely aligned the 4 products are - even though they are all in the same sector.

For example, if I was selling trousers, shirts, shoes and casuals I would put them on one site.

But if I was selling new Jags, Mercs, Beemers and Porsches I would have 4 sites (with a 5th "head office" hub site)

With the latter option I would apply a branding theme flowing from the "Head Office" site

[jdpos]

Same as RayB said but cars on one site and clothes on the other

[RayB]

Same as RayB said but cars on one site and clothes on the other

Yes indeed!

I think I failed miserably in my first post.

The simple point I wanted to make is: 95% of the time all on one site is the correct solution :)