Analysing Use of Sub Domain or Using Sub Folders
I had a request come in about a consulting job where the prospect had a very large online store and was using 17 or so sub domains to sell a variety of products. The prospect has not tried working with a marketing agency before and was a little clueless on the starting point but was very clear on the end result.
The end result was to make more sales conversions. This is a good goal to have but is it achievable with what is ultimately a mess of a project? I think yes that is a realistic result but a result that can be achieved in 2 to 3 months once the dust settles on the move of the site structure.
A sub domain vs a sub folder.
A subdomain is a website domain that is a variation of a main domain for example this blog is a subdomain of blogspot. It looks like this - everwebs.blogspot.com with blogspot being the domain and everwebs being the subdomain.
A sub folder is a folder dedicated to a category or topic, like our candles example if Blogspot sold candles their folder structure would look like this - blogspot.com/candles/
Blogspot is the domain and /candles/ is the folder.
The Project:
The original consult before my involvement was to move all subdomains into website sub folders on the main branded domain. I can see the logic in this and from the brief, it all looked like our natural process and would be a bit of work but completely doable.
On the first call to the client, I spoke about the pros and cons of the move and stated that there will be some time for the dust to settle before an ROI could be measured and everyone understood this. Once the session had finished I went to work mapping all subdomains to the main domain created the site structure and set up all the mapping document so that everyone no matter what technical level could easily read and understand the movement and the reasoning why.
Once I had that map document completed our next session was booked with the prospect. I presented the strategy planning documents and then the mapping document and explained each step everyone understood the process. So far s good smooth sailing but the prospect had some hesitations around sub folders for a good reason.
The reasons were that each industry is kept separate from the main domain, visitors to one of these subdomains are shown one price and when they are logged in if they have a buyers account they see another price. The other issue is that some products overlap with industries so that means that they appear on more than one of the subdomains. Jeepers ok lets get to the point, the prospect has different prices for these crossover products on each subdomain so if all subdomains were placed on one domain visitors could search industry category 1 and see all products listed there but then if they selected on the site industry category 2 they will see all of that categories products and prices.
Now if you have kept up with me you would see the issue there. The issue if you are not keeping score is that people will see for example a wax candle in category 1 selling for $4.99 and then when they select category 2 that same candle will be selling for $2.99. This is a problem and one that needed to be identified well before the task fo domain mapping had been started.
There is a workaround to keep each domain separate when mapped to the sub folders but its a big task. This is a spanner in the works, The best move here is to leave the domains as they are.
Did I just agree to that? No but after assessing the prospect's situation regarding this new information it could be best to just leave subdomains and carry on optimising the page load speeds and conversion rate per page.
In conclusion, I believe that we have made the right suggestion to the prospect but had we known the information around wanting to kee each subdomain as a separate entity from the main brand we would of not recommended sub folders.
This lies with me to create the new structure and do my best to keep each sub folder separate from the main domain as best I can. Great start to the working week.
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