One website or two?

not sure if I should have separate sites for 2 different products

[wackal]

I currently have a site that sells popular music. We've been looking to expand into other areas and we are currently planning to sell shopping cart software that is based on our own custom shopping cart.

My question is, how should I approach this from a business point of view? I would like to create a separate area on my current site where we could sell this under our current business name, but I'm not sure if this will create too much confusion for our customers or if there will be trust issues.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

[bakedjake]

Popular music and online shopping cart software have nothing to do with each other.

Two sites. Two brands. :)

[KoDe_GuRu]

I agree completly. Two sites, 2 brands.

I wouldn't even think about going at it the other route.

[wackal]

what about ssl sertificates and merchant accounts? would you use the ones you already have or go all out and get new certs and merchant accts for the new brand?

[ncw164x]

Get new certs and merchant accts for the new brand? It gives your site more credibility than sharing the certificates

ncw164x

[bakedjake]

Two certs, yes, for sure.

The merchant account doesn't matter. That's all backend stuff, and no one will care too much about that.

[JayC]

>> The merchant account doesn't matter. That's all backend stuff, and no one will care too much about that.

Probably right, no one will care "much." But I'd base the decision on what the identifier on the merchant account is (what the customer sees on their statement), or whether you can get it changed. If it's not clear to people when they check their credit card bills what it is that they bought, you can expect chargebacks.