Network of sites or not?

Hello, I have a question about my e commerce website.
I just had a plumbing fixture website built professionally. (as of now, 1 man operation) Eventually I would also like to sell lighting fixtures and solar fixtures as well. Would it be better to make my current site all inclusive for the above items or should i start building a network of sites individually? Example - Plumbing fixture site, lighting site, solar energy site, etc. (about 40,000 products all together).
I am leaning towards the 1 site opposed to multiple site. Is this okay or not and why... Thanks in advance...

I'm new to e-commerce, but relatively experienced in business. This may be good advice may not.

In my opinion it is all in how you market your site. If you are designing a home fixtures site and are marketing it as a one-stop-shop then it would make sense to have all of those categories in there.

However, if you start a plumbing site and market it as such you will have a more difficult time further on down the road with adding the other categories. Although they are related, they won't stand out as much.

I think since you've already built your plumbing site. Get that moving forward and don't over extend yourself worrying about the other categories. Focus on building your SEO for plumbing parts.

Once you have that running. Consider doing the same for lighting fixtures and Solar fixtures. When the time comes, factor in what kind of searches people are doing when they come to your website and see if it would make sense to lump them in or separate.

An example of this is, if a majority of people are finding your website through searches like "home repair parts" as opposed to "4 inch gasket valve".

It might make more sense to have separate sites for each category, but make them all feel the same and link between them.

Just my two cents tho

Chodedone18 is correct. This is an issue of branding as much as it is about SEO.

Given the sections you listed I would strongly consider separate sites. I would not personally expect to find solar products on a plumbing site. Some of that will also depend upon your domain name. If it is 'franksplace' or something similarly generic it will be easier to re-brand as a multi-category site. If it is 'plumbersplace' I wouldn't recommend trying to drive solar panel traffic to it.

Multiple sites are definitely more work to maintain than a single one but there are advantages in branding etc. In the end it is up to you.

Think about what would be required in terms of changes to your existing site to accommodate the new products and how that would effect your existing traffic. Then think about wither your anticipated new traffic would be confused by your current selection.
You might also think about wither you intend to expand to even more categories later.

Also, you indicated you have a one man operation. You might want to double check if you think adding new lines vs. marketing those you have is the most profitable way to go.

Good luck either way.

Thank you for the excellent replies. Very helpful information. I have made my decision and i will be building a network of sites oppose to one big site. I have the plumbing fixture site complete and my next one will be the home lighting fixture site and the solar will come last. I see the point with trying to brand the sites opposed to rolling it all into one. It might be too confusing that way plus i think it will be cluttered with categories. I have some great domain names for these sites and i think its gonna work out great in the long run. Thanks so much..

Now that you have made the decision to go with a network of sites, it may be worthwhile to consider an integrated system to handle all your sites. This way you can handle all your crm activities, accounting, inventory, etc. from one place rather than having each store and everything associated with it as a silo.

IMO, single large site would be better option in long run. Easier to build links, authority, trust provided you do it the right way.

Ensure proper internal links structure, breadcrumb navigation and map important keywords against url’s. Add a blog and you are set to go.

Eg: ( I just made up the domain name )

Fixturespace.com/plumbing-fixures/product-name

Fixturespace.com/lighting-fixures/product-name

Fixturespace.com/solar-fixures/product-name

Wish you great success!

-AD

Good point, im actually going to take your advise on that. It would be 10 times easier to manage accounting and inventory from one control panel.

Thank you and the same to you, best wishes with success. I really thought the 1 big site was better at first but my only problem was that I already have such a large database on the plumbing site (10,000 plus products and plenty of categories). The main problem i see with that is, too many products and too many categories. Im worried that it might become too cluttered and or confusing. If I had less categories, maybe. So what i will be doing is, listing my network of sites towards the bottom of each site.

I've built and helped to enhance and market 100's of ecommerce sites (mostly Yahoo! Stores), and in so doing, worked with 100s of store owners. Start with 1 site. Doing it well for 1 site will be far more time consuming than you think. Duplicating the effort for many sites will almost certainly fail. I have had many clients who successfully run a number of sites, but they all had one going string before starting the others. And I have watched MANY try to start a bunch at once. I have never een any of them make it.

Both have their advantages. Small sites would be easier to rank for certain keywords for your home page case you could buy a domain name and link build each home page, but you lose on the branding again.

Having one big site like a home depot type online store that sell all kinds of stuff could become a really big brand and potentially generate alot more traffic and be worth more than a lot of little sites.

If you do one big site make sure you really research SEO that all your categories are optimized and your site structure is sound from the start. Research other big ecommerce sites to see how they do things.