multiple sites - Network? presentation

[Amie]

I have decided to restructure my business and will now have one primary site with 2 (and possibly more in the future) secondary sites. The cart system for all three sites will be connected to the primary site. The look of the sites will be almost the same, but the content will be specific to the site.

My question is this...

What is the best way to present the 3 sites as a network or as 3 sites run by the same company? I do not want to confuse customers and would like to present it professionally. I do not want having more than one site to see shady or dishonest (because it is not)...but I fear it will seem that way if not presented properly.

Any ideas...or sites I could refer to?

[encyclo]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Amie.

If you want to share a shopping cart accross three sites, you will probably want to share cookies too. In that case, and also for reasons of branding, it would be best to use subdomains of the primary site for the two minor sites - that would clearly differentiate them, but show the association.

So you would have www.example.com as the main site, and redwidgets.example.com and bluewidgets.example.com as the secondary sites. Another similar approach would be to have an umbrella site with three subdomains.

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