Two sites selling same equipment?

[bob57]

Hi, I'm new and would like some advice if that's ok.

I currently run an ecommerce site in an averagely competitive market. I suddenly had a potential eurika moment earlier but would like your opinions.

Say I sell lawn mowers, my prices are roughly the same as the competition of which there are say nine main rivals. All being equal, I'd get a 10% share of the market.

Now here's the science bit. If I copied my products and prices to a new site on a different server and ran both sites along side each other, would I get an 18% share of the market? or would I get two 5% shares due to the dilution of my market or something in between?

In other words is it worth doing at just the expense of a domain and hosting (I do the design myself).

Cheers

Bob

 

[Ranks]

Why do you only expect your sghare of the available business? If your stuck in a town or something then maybe, but this is the internet...do your plan with 10 sites (you'll need different content, slightly different prices) and take say, 50% of the sales.
Jay

 

[bob57]

Well that's my point really, but 10x instead of 2x. I was just wondering if it worked like that. If it did work I'd expect to see Comet and others doing it but they seem to rely on just the one site.

Cheers

Bob

 

[Ranks]

Nah, the big retailers do have other sites, and many affiliates too (same effect). You don't increase sales exactly (2 sites won't really double sales, 4 sites won't quadruple)
But you get a page one on Google with 7 or so of our own sites, across many keywords, you'll do more business than with one great site.
Keep the quality up as you expand though, you'll already know how much it takes to run a successful site, each one you add increases workload by about 1.5 times up to about 10 or 15 sites. Remember, new link sources, content etc
Sounds like your on the right track though mate
Jay

 

[bob57]

Great advice thanks

Yes, I know it takes a lot to run a successful site and sure it will be more work, but if I'm going to increase sales I might even be able to outsource that extra work and still return a profit. It's certainly worth working out some projections for.

Cheers

Bob

 

[Wikki]

I know a few companies who doing this, especially in the bodybuilding supplement market. Just remember not the copy your website content word for word because that won't help your search engine rank. Secondly take into consideration your advertising bill will double.

 

[Astaroth]

If every company got an equal share then yes you would get 18% of the market however the reality is that not all companies are equal and so even though everyone may have identitical pricing, offers etc a trend will still develop over which companies get a bigger market share and which get a lower.

A lot also depends on your brands, products and market. Whilst Commet doesn't do it (as far as I am aware) their main rival does with DSG running Currys, Dixons and PC World. Likewise look at RBS Insurance that runs Direct Line, Churchill, Privilege, Tesco, NIG, Green Flag, Egg, Mint, RBS, Natwest, Virgin, Inter to name only a small number of theirs.

If your market/ product is commoditised, your buyers simply want to buy and arent looking for information or support then the more links you have on Google page 1 then certainly the far better you will do. If your customer base are highly loyal, want prestige and advice then having more page 1 links will help but ultimately a known brand name is going to carry more weight.

Two things to ensure, firstly you dont duplicate content as this will get you penalised. Secondly, if your going for the effort of two sites/ brands then its worth trying to differentiate them and target slightly different customer segments.

 

[Jay-UK]

If every company got an equal share then yes you would get 18% of the market however the reality is that not all companies are equal and so even though everyone may have identitical pricing, offers etc a trend will still develop over which companies get a bigger market share and which get a lower.

A lot also depends on your brands, products and market. Whilst Commet doesn't do it (as far as I am aware) their main rival does with DSG running Currys, Dixons and PC World. Likewise look at RBS Insurance that runs Direct Line, Churchill, Privilege, Tesco, NIG, Green Flag, Egg, Mint, RBS, Natwest, Virgin, Inter to name only a small number of theirs.

If your market/ product is commoditised, your buyers simply want to buy and arent looking for information or support then the more links you have on Google page 1 then certainly the far better you will do. If your customer base are highly loyal, want prestige and advice then having more page 1 links will help but ultimately a known brand name is going to carry more weight.

Two things to ensure, firstly you dont duplicate content as this will get you penalised. Secondly, if your going for the effort of two sites/ brands then its worth trying to differentiate them and target slightly different customer segments.

if you mean duplicate content linking to a site, this is a myth. You dont get penalised..least not by google. If that was the case then product descriptions on sites would be blown away, as an example.

Lots of other reasons why this is a myth - but had to point that out.

 

[bob57]

Well in my niche, customers are looking for good prices and a trustworthy site and don't seem to care too much about support or store loyalty so that shouldn't be a problem. The product details would have to be duplicates as I have around 800 products on the site. My thinking is all my competitors have the same duplicate product details as we've all just copied the info from the manufacturer's sites so if google does penalise me, then it would be the same for my competitors too wouldn't it?

As suggested, it might be better to focus the second site on a macroniche (is that a word?) e.g petrol lawn mowers rather than lawn mowers in general.

One thing I have seen is a competitor setting up a microniche site and calling it something like honda-lawn-mowers.com or something. Almost making out they are honda themselves. Kinda dodgy in my opinion but is it frowned upon?

 

[Astaroth]

By google? No. By the trademark owner (ie Honda) then probably unless they have previous permission. Normally doesnt take too long for these to be picked up and the solicitors contacting them.

 

[Ranks]

There are lots of ways of creating unique product desc pages whilst still using the copied manufacturers text...what platform are you using?
Jay

 

[shopintegrator]

Hi,

If you decide to go this route and have multiple websites, you'll want to consider how best to sell the same products across multiple websites that minimises your workload.

The Shop Integrator ecommerce toolkit will allow you to create your products, shipping plans etc once in the Shop Integrator admin console and then embed the same ecommerce plugins in to your different websites. So even though your websites may all have unique content and different URL, even web host, they will all make use of the same embedded store features, so when you change the price of widget A in your online Shop Integrator admin console, all your different websites start showing and using the new price.

When your customers checkout on each of the different websites, they will end up creating an order with you that feeds in to your single Shop Integrator online shop back end system and pay you for the order in to the same PayPal/Internet Merchant account.

 

[edmondscommerce]

Another great platform for this kind of idea is Magento

its possible to sell under multiple personas and try out different pricing and marketing strategies on each..

free shipping
low prices
lower number of higher quality products at high prices
only selling in quantitiy but with big discounts
trade only
public sector only
etc etc

 

[bob57]

Hi and thanks for the replies

I've currently got a customised OScommerce setup but I'm thinking of going over the magento or one of the others.

I've heard of article spinning (been lurking here for a bit) but is there some way to automatically spin product descriptions?

 

[edmondscommerce]

I wouldn't worry about spinning your descriptions

but its definiltey worth changing product titles (and thereby the <title> tag of your product pages).

You can try to automate it but I would suggest doing it manually if you can, its the single most important SEO factor.