Decommissioning an eCommerce website

best practice?

[Rugles]

We have an under performing eCommerce website that we want to pull the plug on. Low traffic and sales and it kinda competes with our main website. It is not worth the effort for upkeep and its small overhead. It has very few back links.

What would you recommend to decommission this website?

- just pull the plug and go dark?
- pull plug and provide link to other site?
- a redirect to existing site?
- other ideas?

I did a search on WebmasterWorld and do not find anything current.

[LifeinAsia]

I'd leave it up for a while with redirects and links to the main site. Have at least one page explainign the reason for shutting down and encouraging visitors to shop at the main site.

[Rugles]

That was our first idea. The concern was that it would appear as a doorway page to G. Mostly because it is a keyword laden domain name.

[jimr451]

I would put in 301 redirects so the search engines know the pages are no longer valid - as LifeinAsia suggested maybe send them to a page explaining the shut down and where to go for service now.

After a few months, just pull the plug on it.

[onlineleben]

I would Keep it running as is. Competing with yourself means you have the Chance to be on the SERPs more than once. This gives you a better Chance to get the visitor. Also you have an established fallback positon in case your main sites gets hit by a nasty G-animal.
I have a case where my main site has a popular page for certain widgets. This creates a constant flow of sales. I also run a widget-comparison site, which depending on keyword, is sometimes directly shown before or after the main sites page. And These positions are in the first 5 results (not pages :) ).

[oliondor]

I would just keep it also, it does not demand any effort.

[minnapple]

If you are treating it like a #*$! child, move on and let it go dark.