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Ask HN: Would you host a hybrid B2C/B2B startup under separate domains?

1 points by ftufek ↗ HN
Hey folks,

We built a consumer facing app using <x>app.com domain and it's been successful and has grown quite a bit. A few business owners have asked us for an API access to our backend and we already have a few paying clients.

We're in the processing of negotiating for the <x>.com domain. When we get it, we need to decide if we keep <x>.com domain for b2b and <x>app.com separate for b2c only or if we combine them all under the same domain.

Wondering if HN community has any thoughts on which approach would be the best? The advantages of combining is to increase the new domain's authority and traffic right away by redirecting existing traffic. The disadvantages is we need to make sure we get navigation right, etc. Are there any examples of startups doing both b2c/b2b that get it right?

7 comments

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themerone
Not a startup, but I have domains serving both b2b and b2c and don't see any downside.
ftufek
Out of curiosity, which one is most prominent on the homepage itself?
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chiefalchemist
So you have an existing domain? That's B2C? That's served you well? And you're going to redirect them to another domain? And that new domain is expanding (?) to cover B2C + B2B? And then you're going to manage those two target markets on that one site?

I would say that unless you can make a strong case to combine them, don't do it. If you intend to grow the B2B audience then give it the focus and attention it deserves. (Which also means the site / market that isn't broken keeps printing money).

If B2B gets enough traction and in the future merging the two makes sense, well that's a good problem to have.

ftufek
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, that's the right, the main reason is traffic/domain authority. The current site has gathered some backlinks and ranks high for the niche we care about.

The way I look at it, 99.9% of our traffic is consumers and all our paying business customers started out as consumers, since <x>.com can be more brand able and trustworthy, I think it has higher likelihood of ranking even higher eventually which would increase our funnel.

dylanhassinger
Model that a lot of saas seem to use is:

put your consumer marketing site front and center at x.com

sub-brand your enterprise offering, and have a section explaining it, i.e. x.com/pro

this way you're maximizing your seo juice and consumer reach

the actual apps themselves can live on a subdomain, i.e. app.x.com for the consumer and pro.x.com for the enterprise

if/when the enterprise version really takes off, you could always rename it something unique if desired

ftufek
Yeah that was my initial thinking as well. My only concern was discoverability, meaning if we put a huge "Businesses here >" it might be a bit annoying to normal users, but I guess we could design it in a better way.