Forum Moderators: phranque
I would like to stay away from splash pages and popups or another domain alltogether. I like content rich pages, but I currently have one side of the business on top of the main page and the other on the bottom, which dosnt really work for the one on the bottom too well. Any suggestions on how any of you have solved this type of problem in the past? Thanks for any insight.
If you need some text on the page, add some text on the page.
If you choose an overall color scheme for each business section, and then have a color-coded intro box/area, with a mini-index for each "side" of the business on the front page of your site, everybody should have an easy time finding what they need.
In one extreme example, the Ruddick Corp. is a holding company which owns: 1) Harris Teeter, a major supermarket chain in the South, and 2) American & Efird, a consumer sewing thread company. The only thing that they have in common is the owner, so the best approach has been to put corporate and investor information on the main site, but all consumer, distributor, etc. information on separate sites.
For a slightly different example, Citigroup offers thousands of different products in dozens of subsidiaries to hundreds of different markets. However, they are all financial services. The main corporate home page provides corporation-wide press releases and information, then offers choices for browsing by audience/product and by business unit. Similarly, Microsoft sells software to everyone for everything, so you can browse their site by product (Office, XP, Media Player, etc), by audience (Home, Student, Governemnt, etc), or type of resoruce (support, downloads, tools).
SMC is "OK" in my view, but it would be better if they had a cookie that remembered which "side" you chose. I think Vanguard does this for personal vs. institutional investors.
The text on the pages could need to be completely different, and from an SEO point of view it could well take completely different core keyword sets for the two - in addition to which site navigation is a critical element in optimizing a site, if not THE most important element in planning the design of an optimized site from the ground up, rather than having to go through the time and expense of re-doing a whole site if it's not search engine friendly. Ideally, the keyword choices should come first and a site should be designed with keyword-based navigation if at all possible for maximum results.
but I don't want to lose business from the other potential clients. The way I have the page layed out now, it is obviously designed towards the previously dominant side.
Russell, it's hard to tell without knowing whether it's a completely different service or related. Is there a cross-over and relatedness between the most important keywords? Do the different services target a different niche market, maybe even with a different pricing structure? If so, different types of design appeal to different sectors.
If they're very related and pricing isn't an issue you can revise the directory structure and navigation on the site in a search engine friendly way. If they're different in design, pricing or theme/keyword aspects it might be better to branch off to a second site for the new market you're trying to reach.
[edited by: Marcia at 8:03 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2002]
the two sides are related, both are 'tech type services', but the type of clients are completely different
If they're both tech the design can be the same. If by different types of clients you mean they're looking for related but different services, a homepage can be made to be a just a general introduction with distinct sections for two different services, rather than emphasizing one at the expense of the other.
If search engine placement is an issue and a concern, again - it takes keyword research, particularly looking at how the major directories have them categorized. In some cases having separate sites is a decided advantage in that respect.
Speaking generally, in some cases there may have been branding established with business mostly coming from referrals and word of mouth or local and/or offline promotion. In that case, or if one service augments credibility for the other, together is best.
If you're not overly concerned with directory or search engine listings go with distinct sections, but redesign the homepage to make it very clear and evident that two services are offered, and only one click away. Both have to be somewhat prominently displayed above the fold so people know what you're offering as soon as they get to the site. You can still design it to be search engine friendly, but that's a different subject.
