3 multi-site strategies that actually work
[Strategy #1] Multi-user management
When operating a multi-site, you have to manage multiple users, whether they may be content creators, editors, system administrators or webmasters. It is crucial that each of these users profile have their own set criteria and permissions – this prevents users from accidentally accessing parts of the multi-site infrastructure they are not supposed to be in.
It is common practice to assign users to a particular site in a multi-site environment. But the drawback here is that each site will also have their own user database. And for an organization who operate a large number of sites, they would need to go into each individual site just to manage their users. This is both time-consuming and highly inconvenient.
To efficiently manage your users in a multi-site environment, it is best to take advantage of a third-party solution that allows you to amalgamate all of the users on each site into a single user database.
[Strategy #2] Google Analytics multi-site & cross-domain tracking
Rather than going to each site just to analyze how well it is performing, you can view and retrieve the analytic information for all your sites via Google Analytics.
Google Analytics comes with a feature that enables you to track multiple websites under a single Analytics user account. There are two ways to add multiple sites to your Google Analytics account:
- Add all your sites as properties under a single Analytics account ID
- Assign each site to a unique Analytics account ID.
It may be beneficial to do both, in order to track traffic at a granular, as well as at a holistic level.
Another feature of Google Analytics is cross-domain tracking. While the standard Analytic tracking code enables you to retrieve performance data for any given URL, cross-domain tracking makes it possible to retrieve data from two related sites such as an eCommerce site and a third-party shopping cart that is hosted on another domain. This is sometimes referred to as site linking.
Using the example of the eCommerce site and the third-party shopping cart, without cross-domain tracking, a user visits your eCommerce store and then proceeds to your third-party shopping cart will be counted as two separate users, with two separate user sessions. But cross-domain tracking lets you see this as a single session by a single user.
[Strategy #3] Utilize a multi-tenant CMS platform
To fully understand this strategy, let us first define what “multi-tenant” actually means.
Multi-tenancy refers to a governance model and technical architecture where the tenants, such as a brand or department, within a business organization, have the freedom and autonomy to define and manage their own sites, data sources and channels, while, at the same time, have the ability to share the features and resources with the other tenants.
To illustrate this, take a look at the diagram below:
Basically, unlike a multi-site infrastructure where each site has its own database, modules, and features, a multi-tenant architecture shares the resources and data from a central location. This is perfect for organizations that want to operate multiple sites that share both content and features.
Also, by willingly and collectively defining and sharing all the features and resources available, a multi-tenant architecture helps to reduce the cost of both development and maintenance.
A multi-tenant environment is also suitable for organizations who want to run multiple eCommerce brands from a single master inventory rather than having separate inventories for each site that result in inconsistencies as mentioned before.
One of our customers, Tivoli Audio, is a great example of this. Their previous eCommerce platform – Magento – didn’t allow them to manage their sites at local levels. So, if one site went down, the other sites went down as well.
After migrating to Core dna, they’re able to manage the sites individually – different products, pricing structure, payment methods, shipping methods – depending on which country they’re in. Yet at the same time, the company was able to keep things like site design and navigation consistent — due to all the sites being centrally managed.
(Tivoli Audio manage all of their international sites in one roof)