Q&A: Keep it all on one site or split?

The Transcript

Jerod Morris: Welcome to Sites, a podcast by the teams at StudioPress and Copyblogger. In this show, we deliver time-tested insight on the four pillars of a successful WordPress website: content, design, technology, and strategy. We want to help you get a little bit closer to reaching your online goals, one episode at a time.

I’m your host Jerod Morris.

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Welcome to another special Q&A episode of Sites.

Our question for this episode comes to us from Henrik Blomgren. Henrik’s question is as follows:

I´m planning on starting up a website that will be both my own portfolio, my first try at selling themes/PSD/Sketch files to visitors, and for this I have a couple questions.

1. Would you recommend having that combination of areas on the same site or would you recommend splitting them up even more?

2. What e-commerce plugin would you recommend? Currently looking at WooComerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

Those are my two concerns right now so any help/answers are appreciated.

In order to answer this question, I sought the counsel of one the smartest designers I know: Rafal Tomal, our lead designer at Rainmaker Digital.

Here is Rafal’s response:

1. I would combine both just to get started. It may be easier to sell products as cheaper alternatives to his services. Once he establishes a stronger brand and people start coming just to buy his products then I think it would make sense to start building a separate brand for it and redirect customers there.

2. Yeah, WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads are probably good choices for a start.

Thank you, Rafal.

I agree with him. Since Henrik is just getting starting with this website, I don’t see the need to split his content into two separate sites. As Rafal said, if his audience grows, and if he starts generating significant revenue from the digital product sales, then maybe it would be smart to split. Until then, do it all on one site and let all of your efforts push that one site forward.

And while I have not personally used WooCommerce, and only have very brief experience with Easy Digital Downloads, I have heard good things about both from people with more extensive experience. Just look at the numbers:

• WooCommerce is installed on more than 3 million WordPress websites and has a rating of 4.6 stars in the WordPress plugin repository.
• Easy Digital Downloads is installed on more than 60,000 WordPress websites, and it has a rating of 4.8 stars in the plugin repository.

Compare the two and choose the one that works best for you.

Good luck Henrik, as you get your new website project off the ground. Please send me a tweet or an email and let me know you listened to this episode, and you can send me any follow-up questions you might have as well.

If you have a question you’d like to submit for one of our Q&A episodes, please go to studiopress.blog/submit-your-question/ and use the form to submit. You can find that link in the show notes for this episode, which are always available at studiopress.blog.

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I’ll talk to you soon.

Join me next time, and let’s keep building powerful, successful WordPress websites together.

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