multiple product types on site.

[Scally_Ally]

Hi All,
i was just hoping to get your opinion on this subject, and what route you would advise taking.

I have a site that in the long term (say 1 years time) would be selling multiple items in different categories, say for example widgets, gadgets and tajgets (?). These 3 categories are almost unrelated to each other but all come under the same roof.
The problem is that at the moment i only have widgets to sell, not the other 2, but in 6 months time i will have these to sell. Would you advise that i put back my go-live date until i have all the products that i will be selling on the site, or would you advise to just go right ahead and start selling on there anyway, then as and when the other products come through just add them on.
My main though is how this would effect SEO for the site, would it be difficult once i have established a footing in the widgets category to change the market of my site to include the gadgets category.
Also any other problems you could forsee by putting my site live too early - without the full range of products that i will be selling

Thanks in Advance
Ally

[HRoth]

I have different categories of widgets on my site too and started out with only one of those categories on the site. I think it is a good idea to just get started now with your one category and then just expand the site as the other stuff comes in. Why wait to make money?

The main problem I have had with the different categories on the site is not search engines but shipping. The group one widgets are way smaller than the other widgets. One part of me wishes I had a separate site for the small widgets, and I still fantasize about doing that someday.:) My shipping would be so simple then. Still, I have found if anything that having different groups of widgets increases my chances of getting decent ranking in the search engines.

[Scally_Ally]

Yeah, Thats a really good point on the shipping..
I read an article last week on WW about the advantages of free shipping, and that was the angle i was going to take - say free shipping over a certain price, but some of the widgets that would be on the site at a later date would cost a lot more to ship...

Another idea i was toying with was mentioning (keywords, meta data etc) the other widgets that will be on my site later but not at the moment - then on the homepage saying that "these products are not yet available, please check back later". But i think that going down this road could put the user off as what they are searching for is not on there - therefor ending the repeat custom (or even the first order!).

[dpd1]

It's hard to make a comment without knowing exactly what the types of items are. If the items are related in any type of overlapping sort of way... In other words, if there's any reason why someone would NOT buy an item you have now, because they know this other so and so item is coming... then I would not tell them anything about what's coming. I would never want to give anyone a reason to put off buying what I have today, for something else I may have tomorrow. If the items are totally unrelated, you might want to consider separate sites. For example... If you had bath stuff and kitchen stuff... That goes together under household items, which is OK. But I wouldn't want to put bath stuff and say... auto stuff under the same site. As far as when to announce the site... I would go ahead if you have a decent amount of things now. As long as the amount is respectable... If it's such a low amount that people are kind of like... 'That's all these guys have?'... Then I'd wait. I think the first time people come to a site is a big risk... What they see that first time is what's going to make them decide if they'll ever come back. So you definitely want a good first impression, and you don't want to give any kind of 'under construction' type of vibe.

Dave

[Fizpok]

I experimented with sites and SEO at ecommerce.snowcron.com
The conclusion: you NEED to separate items with different keywords, to keep SE happy, but you can use subdomains (and avoid paying for an extra site).

Like this:

widgets.mysite.com
gadgets.mysite.com