Designing for Half a Dozen Key Products

What are the best ways to differentiate product areas?

[Hawkgirl]

My web site was initially designed with one product in mind – Pointy Widgets.
Now we are ready to roll out two more products – Squiggly Widgets and Freaky Widgets.

The first thing I’m doing is changing my home page from a product-specific page to a company/brand page. I’ll have www.smartwidgets.com, and then www.smartwidgets.com/pointy will be the new “mini-home” page for the Pointy Widgets product. (I’ll be building out each new product this way.)

The original site, focusing on the Pointy Widgets product, was designed entirely with the colors from corporate logo – blue, yellow, a little red.

I assume that the new “uber-home page” (the company/brand page at www.smartwidgets.com) will also reflect the corporate colors – blue, yellow, a little red.

My dilemma is: do I roll out each new product with the same UI elements but with a new color scheme (a la Priceline.com) or do I keep the exact same elements AND colors for each product?

Reasons to stay with the same color scheme for all products

A consistent user experience no matter what product they’re seeing

Colors clearly identifiable with our brand no matter where a user is

Easier to develop – buttons, etc. are reusable

Reasons to have a different color scheme for each product

No customer confusion – which product am I looking at?

Easier to differentiate each product’s “mini-home page”

Something new for me to look at every single day of my LIFE (okay, so this has very little weight!)

Breaks up the color monotony on the site – introduces new visual experiences

I haven’t found much in the literature on this issue (although I’m probably not searching with the right keywords!) I’ve reviewed some popular multi-product sites and am finding a mixed bag – if there’s a secret sauce, not everyone has found it.

Any thoughts on what to do? Are there any resources out there addressing this issue? I’m personally leaning toward a different color for each product, but I’d rather do what actually works, not what my whims tell me to do.

[Nick_W]

I'd go for the hybrid, same corporate look UI but with different color headlines etc.

Your h2's coould have a subtley different bg color for example. I'm in favour of keeping the experience uniform but I also like what themes offer.. so do both ;)

Hick

[pat_s]

Do both works. A new color scheme for each product, but taken off from the corporate colors for branding's sake if possible. So I guess that means that I agree..do both. I think that the new visual experience will work well. It wakes you up, tells you that you're looking at something different an resets a whole new attention span.