A tried and tested recipe for success amongst ecommerce retailers is the development of multiple sites aimed at a range of different keywords. Such a strategy helps businesses to increase their sales by aiming, not only at the mainstream keywords in the market, but also some of the more obscure, lesser known terms which do not attract the same quantity of searches, but still result in a good number of sales.
Whether the strategy for your ecommerce websites is based on increasing revenues, differentiating brands or entering into niche markets, multiple ecommerce websites help you to attract more customers and capture a larger slice of the pie.
It is up to you whether you offer the same products across a number of ecommerce stores and simply try to attract customers searching for the same products using different terms, or you decide to offer a subset of goods on each site which compliments your existing product range. Either way, multiple webshops are an excellent method of increasing sales.

How should you approach SEO?
Splitting up your product range and becoming a specialist in a specific field rather than a jack of all trades can benefit both search engine visibility and ranking. The ability to target specific keywords, rather than simply those that are market staples, allows you to achieve a ‘quick win’ as the more obscure keywords will usually attract far less competition. This can clear the way for a rapid rise in the rankings and ongoing sales to tie you over whilst you implement a longer term SEO campaign to help you compete on other ecommerce websites for the most competitive terms. Having the major keyword in your domain name is one of the benefits of this strategy that you can easily take advantage of.

Appeal to a wide demographic
Developing a number of ecommerce websites also allows you to aim your website at differing target markets. No one ecommerce website can hope to appeal to every demographic, even if it appears at number one in the search engine rankings. Elements such as website design, the text and the overall message all appeal to different users. By identifying a target market before the development stage of ecommerce websites, and by gearing all elements towards this demographic can help to mop up a wide range of customers with varying tastes.

Of course not all platforms will support this strategy and it is often those built from the ground up that experience the most success. Once the development stage is complete, a varied approach to both SEO and website design will help to open up areas of the market you were previously unable to access.

Real world examples
Many retailers who have adapted this strategy have been successful online; a great example of this is World Stores, a UK based company. In 2011 they shipped over 200,000 products online and were the fastest growing online home goods retailer. In June last year, in a second investment round from Advent and Balderton, they secured a further £8.5 million backing. At the time of the investment they had 77 online stores in operation with plans to develop more, their current online store list can be seen here. From the list you can see how they’ve implemented the strategy to target specific areas of the home goods market.

Another good example of a succesful company following this same strategy is CoolBlue in The Netherlands. They’re specialized in home electronics, having a separate shop for almost every single item type. Their list of niche shops can be found here.

What is your opinion? Have you seens succesful implementations of this strategy? Let us know!