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Should You Expand Services on Your Current Website or Launch a New One?

Person standing at a fork in the road, symbolizing business decision-making between expanding services on an existing website or launching a new one.

As businesses grow and diversify, many find themselves facing an important question: should new services or products be added to the existing website, or is it better to create a separate, dedicated site? This is a common dilemma for many business owners across industries.

In this article, we’ll explore the factors you need to consider when deciding whether to expand your services on your current website or launch a separate one. We’ll use the example of a local gym that already offers fitness classes and is considering expanding its nutrition services.

The Case Study: A Local Gym Offering Nutrition Services

Imagine a local gym that has built a loyal following of members through its fitness programs. Recently, the gym has introduced a nutrition program, and the owners are seeing strong interest from members. However, they want to grow this nutrition service to appeal to a broader audience, potentially reaching people who aren’t necessarily interested in joining a gym. Now they face a decision: Should they expand their nutrition offering on the existing gym website, or should they launch a separate site solely dedicated to nutrition?

Option 1: Expanding Services on the Existing Website

When you’re thinking about growing your business by offering new services or products, expanding your existing website is often the most straightforward approach. It allows you to build upon the digital presence and audience you’ve already established. Housing both offerings under the same roof can create a more unified brand experience. But while this option might seem like the easiest and most cost-effective solution, it’s important to carefully consider how this decision will impact your website’s user experience, SEO, and brand identity. Let’s dive into the benefits and challenges of expanding services on your existing site.

Pros:

  1. Brand Cohesion and Trust
    By keeping the nutrition service on the existing gym website, you ensure a cohesive brand experience. Clients who trust your fitness expertise may be more inclined to explore your nutrition offerings. This consistency helps reinforce your reputation as a comprehensive health and wellness provider.
  2. Leveraging Existing Traffic
    One of the biggest advantages of expanding services on the same site is the ability to tap into your existing web traffic. For example, gym members or people searching for fitness classes may also have an interest in nutrition. This allows for easy cross-promotion of services, maximizing the potential of your current audience.
  3. SEO Boost
    Your existing website may already have good search engine rankings, especially if you’ve been publishing blog content or optimizing your site for local search terms. Adding more services, such as nutrition, and creating targeted content around it will further boost your site’s visibility. Instead of starting from scratch, you can build on the strong foundation you’ve already laid.
  4. Lower Maintenance Costs
    Managing and maintaining a single website is often more cost-effective and time-efficient than running multiple sites. You’ll save on domain registration, hosting, and design costs while keeping everything streamlined.

Cons:

  1. Diluted Brand Focus
    One potential downside is that expanding into too many service areas could dilute your brand’s focus. If your primary identity is tied to fitness, pushing too much weight into nutrition services might displace your authority as a gym and generate more traffic as a nutrition provider.
  2. Complex User Experience
    As you add more services, the website could become cluttered or confusing to navigate, particularly if users come to your site with very different goals. Fitness-focused visitors may not want to sift through content about nutrition, and vice versa.

Option 2: Launching a Separate Website for the New Service

For some businesses, launching a separate website for a new service can provide a fresh start and more focused opportunities. If your new offering is significantly different from your core services, such as a local gym introducing a standalone nutrition program, creating a dedicated site might be the best way to attract a broader audience. A new website allows you to develop a unique brand identity and tailor marketing specifically to that service without being tied to your primary business. However, this approach comes with its own set of considerations, including the costs of maintaining two sites and the complexity of managing separate digital presences. Let’s explore the advantages and challenges of creating a dedicated website for your new service.

Pros:

  1. Targeted Branding
    Launching a dedicated website for your new service, in this case, nutrition, allows you to create a specialized brand identity. You can target a more specific audience with focused messaging, attracting individuals who may not be interested in gym memberships but are keen on improving their nutrition.
  2. Focused Marketing
    A separate website allows for highly focused marketing strategies. Your digital ads, SEO efforts, and social media campaigns can be tailored solely around nutrition, making it easier to capture the attention of your target audience. This approach also gives you more flexibility to optimize for different keywords, build a community around nutrition, and track results without worrying about interference from unrelated services.
  3. Clear User Journey
    With a separate site, your user experience is simplified. Visitors who land on the nutrition website are only exposed to content relevant to their interests. This eliminates the possibility of confusing visitors with multiple services and ensures a streamlined journey toward purchasing or signing up for the nutrition program.
  4. Room for Growth
    If the nutrition program becomes successful, having a dedicated website gives you room to scale. You can add more resources, tools, and programs over time, evolving it into a robust platform without being constrained by your primary business’s identity or website structure.

Cons:

  1. Increased Costs
    Running two websites means additional costs, including design, hosting, maintenance, and marketing expenses. If resources are limited, this may not be the most efficient option in the short term.
  2. SEO Competition
    Starting from scratch with SEO can be challenging. It will take time to build the same authority and rankings as your original site. Plus, you may end up competing with yourself for certain keywords if you’re targeting similar audiences for both services.
  3. Splitting Focus
    Managing two websites requires more effort, both in terms of time and strategy. You’ll need to create separate content calendars, marketing plans, and user experiences for each site, which can stretch your resources thin, especially if you’re a small business.

Key Considerations When Making the Decision

  1. Budget and Resources
    How much time and money can you realistically dedicate to managing another website? If budget is tight, it may be wiser to stick with your current site until you can justify the additional cost of a new one.
  2. Audience and Goals
    Consider your target audience. Is there significant overlap between the customers of your original service and your new service? If so, keeping everything on one website could work in your favor. However, if the new service caters to a distinct audience, a separate site might be the way to go.
  3. Long-Term Vision
    Think about where you want your business to be in the next few years. If you see your new service growing into a substantial business in its own right, investing in a separate site now could set you up for long-term success.
  4. Brand Identity
    Evaluate how the new service aligns with your current brand. If it fits well under your existing umbrella, expanding your current site makes sense. However, if the service feels like a separate venture that could stand on its own, a dedicated website might be the right move.

Leveraging Cross-Linking Between Websites

One strategy to consider when deciding whether to expand services on your current website or launch a new one is cross-linking—that is, linking between your existing site and the new one to improve SEO and user experience. Cross-linking allows you to build a connection between the two websites, helping search engines understand that they are related and can provide value to visitors.

While cross-linking between sites can offer SEO and user experience benefits, it’s essential to weigh the potential gains against the effort involved. Maintaining two separate websites can be time-consuming, requiring distinct marketing strategies, content updates, and SEO efforts. Cross-linking helps unify these sites to some extent, but it doesn’t eliminate the need to manage two different platforms.

Ultimately, cross-linking is a valuable tool, but it’s not a replacement for the focused effort required to maintain a second website. If your new service has the potential to stand on its own and attract a distinct audience, the benefits of cross-linking should complement the long-term growth of both sites. However, if the SEO and branding gains from cross-linking don’t outweigh the challenges of managing two sites, you might want to reconsider launching a separate website.

Is the New Service Large Enough to Warrant Its Own Website?

Before deciding to launch a separate website for a new service, it’s crucial to evaluate whether the service itself is substantial enough to stand alone. You’ll need to consider whether there’s enough content to support an entire website and whether there is sufficient interest to drive traffic over time. For example, if you’re offering a new nutrition program alongside a gym, can this program generate enough unique blog posts, guides, or resources to keep the site regularly updated and engaging? A website with sparse content can struggle to attract visitors and rank in search engines, so you should have a clear content strategy mapped out before deciding to go this route.

Another factor to consider is whether the service can survive on its own in a competitive local market. If the new service, such as nutrition consulting, is locally focused, you’ll want to evaluate the competition in your area. Are there already well-established businesses with a similar offering? If the market is saturated, a separate site might not gain enough traction. The service may perform better as a complementary offering on your existing site, leveraging your established audience and brand credibility.

It’s also essential to assess how removing the service from your current site might affect your core content. For instance, if your nutrition program has been driving considerable traffic to your gym’s website, separating it could disrupt the user flow and SEO value that the existing site benefits from. In this case, you may end up losing an important part of your site’s traffic, which might impact overall rankings and conversions. If the service complements your core offerings, as nutrition does with fitness, keeping everything under one roof might continue to serve both services well.

If you do decide to move the service to a separate site, you should have a strategy in place to ensure that the original site maintains its momentum. Consider how you’ll continue to build content around the gym’s core services to avoid any drop in rankings and traffic once the nutrition program is removed. This proactive approach can help mitigate any potential SEO damage and keep both sites thriving.

What Should Your Business Do?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to whether you should expand services on your existing website or launch a new one. Both options have clear advantages and disadvantages. For our local gym example, if the nutrition program complements the gym’s offerings and can be effectively promoted to current members, expanding the existing website is a solid choice. However, if the goal is to build a robust, independent nutrition brand that appeals to a broader market, a separate website may provide more flexibility and growth potential.

Ultimately, the decision should be based on your specific goals, resources, and the audience you’re trying to reach. Consider your long-term strategy and choose the option that aligns best with your business vision.