Where businesses are going wrong with managing multiple websites

Think of your digital presence as a set of offices. You’re the owner of the offices, and it’s your job to make sure they’re all in tip-top condition.

Except there’s one problem. They’re based all over the world, run by different people who you don’t know and a few of them are so old they have a dodgy front door that could be jimmied open if an opportunist happened to walk by. Of course, transferring this analogy to the online space, these opportunists are in the form of automated bots where all insecure websites will be hacked eventually.

Your digital estate needs guarding – but in truth, there’s a bigger issue that needs to be solved. You’re not in control of your estate, and you’re not actually sure where it is.

Most organisations have a multisite presence online – meaning they have multiple websites and domains owned by their brand. This could be a mix of brochure sites, specific event sites and e-commerce platforms.

It’s easy enough. You may have ended up creating microsites for a Christmas giveaway, product launch or marketing campaign. They’re set up, designed, populated with content and then left to float around forever. They’re a great idea at the time – but long term, they’re destined to cause you trouble, unless managed properly.

Mergers or acquisitions could have earned you new domains that have either sat dormant or just had a new logo plastered on them before disappearing off the radar again. Losing control of the sites and creating an ecosystem that’s hard to manage can cause problems for marketing teams, IT teams, and your general security.

Well, where do we start? Unless managed in the right way, multiple sites are going to cause your teams a headache.

For your brand identity, it’s tough to keep a consistent brand across multiple platforms. Every time the brand changes, even if it’s just a small change, this will have to be replicated across every site. That’s a lot of admin and development time. That, obviously, is assuming you can actually access the site. Logins could be all over the place, or even managed by a team member who left 5 years ago.

If you’ve used multiple developers and build methods for different sites, you’ll have to keep track of every entity used for each individual website. That means even more admin and lots of hunting around through the CRM. Each update process will be different, and it’ll be hard to plan changes to your sites with any real gauge on timings. Too many cooks, as they say.

From a marketing perspective, your SEO will suffer massively. Multiple websites competing for the same keywords in the same locations will hamper your chances of remaining or attaining the top of the search results. Expect unhappy marketing teams asking for this problem to be solved.

So you’re in control of the digital portfolio – just about. Like a messy office with files all over the place, it’s going to feel like an insurmountable challenge.

It’s Pivale’s job to take the reins and turn your multisite muddle into a more manageable, safe, effective, and managed multisite platform.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have more than one website or domain, of course. We build bespoke managed multisite solutions that work together rather than against each other.

Stay on top of security updates too, with ongoing support that guarantees your business has those dodgy front doors repaired and keeps you safe and compliant.

Admin times for web updates are drastically reduced when your ecosystem is managed by one core team, and additional microsites for events and campaigns are built in less time with less stress.

We believe it shouldn’t be that hard to make a small change across your website portfolio. With Pivale, it’s as simple as it should be.

Talk to our team to discover more about our multisite platform solutions and how it can benefit your organisation.