Some time ago online presence was not considered as an important factor by small businesses. It was just an optional idea, something only large corporations should care about. Nowadays, however, more and more small business owners are getting aware of how useful it can be to promote their businesses. The reasons are obvious; today with just about 15-18% of our population online India is already the 3rd largest Internet user in the world after China & USA. The number of customers doing their research online is increasing everyday and so is the number of businesses going online. This in turn, has increased the competition in the online arena, making it imperative for businesses to have multiple websites to increase their chances to be found by more customers online.

Having multiple websites for a single business is beneficial in more than one way. It provides the opportunity to promote different aspects of your business more effectively. For example, if you have two different lines of product to offer, it is better to have one small website for each of them. Is it impractical? What if we just clearly spell out the different paths on a single website so that every customer can easily find the information that applies to them? One can do that, but still it makes more sense to have multiple websites to grab visitors' attention exclusively and help them locate information easily.

Multiple websites would be good for another reason — when you want to run two different marketing campaigns simultaneously, promote two different brands with different pricing structures, or target two different markets with different price sensitivity, a single website can hardly help. But what about costs? It is much less costly than many business owners think. In fact, many a time maintaining a few single page websites turns less costly than taking care of a single but complicated website loaded with heavy content and graphics.

Some people advocate going for several domain names and point them all to the same website instead of making multiple websites. This can save a few hundred rupees per year. But there seems to be no definitive answer on how this strategy affects a website's search engine results — positively or negatively, and that's why I don't prefer it over the other option. You may consider to register multiple domains for several reasons — to prevent your competitors registering a similar one or accommodate misspellings, but that should not be the excuse for ignoring the need of multiple websites.

Buying domain though is matter of few bucks only but as it safeguards your online identity, hence it is of utmost importance to buy the same on your own name by giving your own contact information so that its ownership stays with you. Trust me, it's not tricky; it's as simple as keeping user name and password of your email. Also domains should always be bought from ICANN accredited registrars as these companies are accredited to sell domain names and as governed by ICANN governing body they do not get involved in any malpractice which means a client's interest will never be compromised either today or in future.

I invite you all to share your opinions.