Have you ever come across a client, or had the issue yourself, where you have multiple businesses involved in a website and you’re just not sure how everything should jive together?
I have a client who has their own business, we’ll call it Awesome Service. This company is a generic enough sounding name that it can be used anywhere, and that’s a good thing since it won’t matter if this client ever moves anywhere, which is exactly what has just recently happened. But, instead of working on their own this client has decided to join an existing office that we’ll call New City Office, as well as start up Awesome Service in another nearby town.
So as you can see, the client will need to find a way to have a web presence for both the original Awesome Service and New City Office. He’s asked for my advice on how to work this out, and it will depend on a few different factors:
- Does New City Office already have a website that this client can be added to? Answer: No
- Is New City Office willing to share costs for a new website? Answer: Yes
Looking at those two answers leads me to the conclusion that it would not be a good idea to combine both businesses into one single website, and here’s why:
- Representation – because New City Office is willing to share costs for a new website, it should represent New City Office only
- Transferability – if in the future my client moves away, there is the option for New City Office to take over payment and maintenance of the website in its entirety, and they would simply remove any references to my client
- Cost – again, because the cost of the website will be shared there should be no extra representation of my client’s original company as it has nothing at all to do with New City Office
So in the end I think the solutions are to keep Awesome Service running as usual and set up its own website so that my client can use it for working in the nearby town only, and to create a brand new website for New City Office only.
Does anyone have a different opinion on how this should be handled? I’d love to hear any other scenarios…