The challenge of setting up a second website

The challenge of setting up a second website

January 29, 2017 5:00 am

There have to be many companies that launch with a selected buyer goal market in thoughts, after which obtain orders from fairly totally different teams.

When I launched My Wedding Aécor in April 2015, I thought solely of promoting wedding ceremony decorations to couples. I described this a number of months in the past, in “Wedding rentals (and order thresholds) boost revenue.”

But my first order in May 2015, three weeks after launching, was from a Sydney occasion administration firm. This amazed me and, particularly, my husband.

My subsequent company occasion orders have been in October 2015, shortly after launching my rental service.

Over the subsequent six months, I observed an evolving gross sales sample: company occasion rental orders have been giant and more and more from repeat clients, whereas bridal purchases and rental orders have been small, frequent, and one-time.

In February 2016, I speculatively purchased the area identify MyEventDecor.com.au to lock out the competitors.

In July 2016, following the launch of my redesigned website, which tried to attraction to each bridal and company clients, I launched into a six-month search-engine-optimization technique to strengthen My Wedding Aécor rankings on Google.

By October 2016, company shoppers comprised sixty two % of my enterprise. I needed to rename my website from My Wedding Aécor to My Event Aécor in 2017 as soon as the busy (Southern Hemisphere) 2016-2017 summer time-Christmas-wedding ceremony-company get together season handed.

And then two weeks in the past, I acquired a name from a Brisbane-based mostly occasion supervisor wanting my assist for a Sydney accounting expo in March 2017. I was greater than alarmed as a result of she started the telephone name with, “I’m sorry to hassle you, as a result of I know you simply focus on weddings.”

Arghhh! How many different occasion managers had assumed my enterprise was devoted to weddings and bypassed me for décor rent corporations that overtly focused company orders?

There was no time to waste. I needed to re-launch the My Wedding Aécor website earlier than I misplaced any extra company enterprise.

But earlier than I might re-launch the location, I wanted to get the My Event Aécor emblem designed.

I used 99designs, the Melbourne, Australia-based mostly design-contest website, from which I selected the profitable emblem from 70 designs in 4 days.

The new emblem retains the monochromatic shade scheme and is a modification of my present emblem. This hopefully helps clients acknowledge my firm after the identify modified from My Wedding Aécor to My Event Aécor.

I naively thought all I needed to do was re-emblem, re-label, and re-launch as My Event Aécor with a 301 everlasting redirect for all My Wedding Aécor URLs.

But then my web site designer ran a Google report and warned me I might lose large — and onerous-gained — web page rankings by doing this and thus endure an enormous drop in visitors, and gross sales.

So now I will launch MyEventDecor.com.au as my second web site in late January.

Those gadgets which might be overtly bridal — comparable to wedding ceremony aisle carpet runners, wishing wells, chuppahs, cake toppers, and stationery — might be featured solely on My Wedding Aécor.

The descriptions for gadgets that go well with each bridal and company enterprise can be revised accordingly for each web sites.

My Wedding Aécor will proceed to promote and lease merchandise. But after discovering solely a fraction of leases are made by brides outdoors the state of Victoria, I have determined that wedding ceremony leases will grow to be restricted to Melbourne (in Victoria), the place I reside.

My Event Aécor will increase its rental vary in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and even Australia-large with gadgets extra more likely to attraction to company occasion planners, who often plan occasions in different cities.

Have you ever launched a second web site to attraction to a special buyer area of interest?


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