Hi there,

I work for an ecommerce company as an online marketing consultant. They make kitchenware, microware and so on.

The are reviewing their overall strategy and as such they want to build up a community.

Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself. The brand would post content occassionally and link the store domain. The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store

I like this approach but I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains.

1. What do you think of both scenarios, one domain versus two? Which one is better?

2. Do you know any examples of ecommerce companies with successful communities within the store domain?

Thanks and regards