Do you really need all those websites?

To build a separate website or not to build a separate website - that is the question.

When a new program or a new service is created, the first thinking is often: ’’let’s build our own website.’ It’s easy to see why this is so appealing: it’s a signal to the world that we exist. The downside, though, comes when you fragment the user experience.? We care about our organisational structure.? Your users don’t. Users often see government departments as one thing — they’re less interested in the units and divisions and sections and branches.? They just want a clear path to getting things done.

How do you decide?

So how do you decide if you *do* need a standalone site? A few factors to frame your research:

Business needs

What are the business needs for the proposed site, and how do they align to the business needs for your current site? If they overlap closely, it’s a good sign to keep the information together.

Resources

Do you really have the time, budget and energy to promote not one but two websites? As my colleague SEO consultant Janet Camilleri puts it: Many people think, "new service, new website". Getting one website to rank is hard enough, without having to split your SEO loving between two or more!"

User needs

What are the user needs for both sites, and how are they impacted by splitting off a separate site? Will people be able to find their way to what they need if it’s on a separate site — and can they navigate to other things you offer that they need? We usually recommend only referring users to separate sites (whether owned by you or someone else) if it’s towards the end of their journey.

Also think about the user tasks that you want to support.?Can these all be completed within your existing site? Technology will often be a factor here.?We’ve been working with a government data clearing house, and their users want to interact with data in a particular way that’s not supported by the corporate site.?So that’s a good case for having a separate site.

Brand

What relationships and expectations do you want to foster through your online presence? How do you want to look, feel and sound? We’ve worked with a few government departments running community awareness campaigns for vulnerable communities.?Here being closely associated with government can be a downside, so this weighs in favour of a separate site.

Having said that, though, just wanting to raise awareness about a specific program or service is not a reason in itself to have a separate site (or even a separate brand).?Over time, this leads to massive fragmentation of your brand — and it takes a lot of effort to rein it all back in. There’s also an argument for keeping everything on the one site where the different facets of what you do reinforce one another.?Where they tell a story about your capability and credibility.

How to streamline your sites

You can also read how we untangled a set of websites for the ACT Government over on this post.