Multiple sites, single database

[paulbeckett]

Hi All

I am planning to create a number clones of my initial (.co.uk) site which will use the same Product Catalog.

The Product Catalog section will be identical in all ways except price which will be country specific. For instance:

.com for US with $ (but price also adjusted to cover postage for this region)
.ca for Canada with Candian$ (but price also adjusted to cover postage for this region)
.co.nz with NZ$ (but price also adjusted to cover postage for this region)

Through investigation I have determined this is possible by using an export of the initial (.co.uk) site’s Catalog into SINGLE database with multiple price fields (for each site/country).

I suppose ultimately I could have as many as 10 sites across the globe. Therefore I was trying to determine if the above strategy is maintainable?

- If I tweaked a product within the .co.uk site – for instance the short description or a custom product property – could this be automatically updated in the other sites?
- Providing the above question is “yes” I think having multiple sites would be easy to maintain. Can anyone else identify any other issues I need to consider? Will this become messy?
- Is there a better way of doing this?

I would value your opinions!

Kind regards

Paul

[Max]

Will this become messy?
Paul

I have been looking in to this matter for myself, in short words actinic is not able to do what you want

Is there a better way of doing this?
Paul

Probably, I'm, looking at a number of programs at the moment, though still have not decided yet. Do a search on google or lycos, something will turn up, on google I typed "multi domain b2c programs "this, and found immediately a b2c program that states this

"With *********, you have the opportunity to maintain a centralized database to serve any number of storefronts, on any domains, with each having its own look and store-level pricing markups. This capability forms the backbone of our top-of-the-range Franchise and Mall Builder system "


Max

[paulbeckett]

Max

Thanks.

What reasons do you think it will become unmanagable? I suspect this is the case but cant quite put my finger on why it would be.

However providing specific product properties (e.g. short description) of a product within the product catalog of Site1 can be amended - and then exported to the database - and then imported in Site2 and Site3 etc - I would of thought it would be possible to manage many sites from 1???

Paul

[wjcampbe]

It sounds as though you are talking about multiple site databases with *SOME* tables linked to the original tables in Site1 to pull the product description etc, but the necessary independent (unlinked) tables to allow you to handle pricing and other local customisations.

If you have sufficient site licenses to cover the sites (or developer), I can see how it would work in theory.

Problems?
10 sites to update to the web every time you change a description, add or delete a product. 10 sets of stock detail, 10 sets of shipping/tax data to maintain. 10 sets of orders to download and process and reupload. (Maybe Mole-End could simplify the orders part for you).

What is the perceived advantage of the site copies over just having multiple domains pointed at the one site?

[paulbeckett]

Hi Bill

The key thing for me is being able to allow each country to feel they are on their own site. Therefore a US customer will read a US specific NET price and make the transaction in US$ (which is different to a UK price because postage costs are different (and combined into the price)).

I had envisaged a design using a SINGLE database that has all tables (e.g. price, short description, image url, long description) updated from Site1. These tables are then imported into the other sites - Site2 (.com), Site3 (.co.nz). Then addtional tables are populated from within the database for the other sites where country specific differences are required:

For instance a calculating field (???) would be used for the price. Price field 1 would be the table from Site 1. Then price field 2 would be use calculating field to work out the US price and then import into SIte 2.

Using the design above (which I appreciate may not be possible) if i change a short description in site1, the other sites would be updated????????

The shipping wouldnt be a problem as I include a fixed postage cost in the price of the product (as described above). Tax data is quite static so I wouldnt be too concerned maintaining this. I would even be prepared to upload 10 sites.

stock levels would need to be dynamically maintained. I must admit I thought this would be possible from reading other postings in this forum.

Paul

[wjcampbe]

Paul,

If you set up 10 sites (as site1 to 10 in developer say) then each site will have its own ActinicCatalog.mdb and ActinicShipping.mdb

In theory, you can delete any table within each site from 2 to 10, and import (linked) the same table from site1, so that one change in ANY site affects all 10 sites. BUT, you cannot then make any change in that data without affecting all 10 sites, so your linked imports would have to exclude any table where even one field needs to be different. Since price is a field in the product table, the whole idea falls flat right here.

Now, if you cannot use linked tables, you need to look at creating an export in site1, that can be manipulated to alter pricing etc and then imported into site2. Manipulated again and imported to site3.....site10.

That is a lot of work.

Mole End have products that would enable the download of orders from multiple sites, but I believe the processing would still have to be done manually on each site.

How will your PSP handle 10 domains accessing the one processing account?

At the end of the day, you are trying to mislead customers into thinking you are local to them and not an international shipping, single location business - how well do you think that will be received when the customer discovers the 'local' shop is all smoke and mirrors?

Which of the ten sites do you think the search engines will see as the original authoritative site for the duplicated content? Or will they ignore all ten?

I would put one-tenth of the cost and effort of setting up all these mirror copies of your working site into marketing the one site you need, and just park all the other domains with a redirect to the one working site.

[paulbeckett]

Bill

Many thanks - I appreciate your advice. The fact will need to manipulate some fields and link others seems to be the stumbling block in my plan.

My intention is not to mislead customers - infact I plan to use my Bath, England location as a marketing tool. However we have found customers like our "delivery included in price" strategy - and of course UK delivery is less than international - therefore I have 2 NET prices.

If I opt for an additional international delivery charge -which I have at the moment - i need a better way of displaying the "alternative" price. I think Norman does something like this so will investigate.

Paul

[Jan]

Mole End have products that would enable the download of orders from multiple sites, but I believe the processing would still have to be done manually on each site

We do, we have our automation product (One Stop Automation, http://www.actinicplugins.co.uk/acat...r_Actinic.html) you can use this to download orders from multiple sites, to upload your catalog and also to process orders (where you order processing is fairly standard).

We also have a stock link program that allows you to link stock and other fields over several sites (this on is in beta). You could use a custom program (or bit of SQL) to covert prices from the main site to the child sites, then you would be automated.

I think that it is important to use the currency of the country that you are trying to sell in, but can see that you might have issues with prices, for example when shopping in the USA you are unlikely to pay the same price for an item, it is more likely to be the same numbers but dollars for pounds, so in this case if you convert the price you might become too expensive.

Regards,

[Owen Drumm]

I have eight sites that sell identical products but have different designs. The way that I have found of updating all the sites is to update the main site and once a week export the Catalog Sections, Products & Product Description tables and then uploading each site. Bear in mind though that all the products are the same price in sterling but I guess you can change the currency in Business settings and add some kind of formula to relate to each currency.