After good few weeks and quite a handful of emails to my beloved clients, I’ve decided to split my main website  into two seperate ones : www.martaspendowska.com and www.polishlab.com.

Before I tell you, why you could or should do the same, let me explain the reasoning behind my decission.

PolishLab was established few years back with the thought in mind it’s going to be my business hub. I coded it with Expression Engine instead of WordPress just because I wanted to learn its semantics. The other website, martaspendowska.com, has been redesigned multiple times and I never knew, how to approach it. I wanted to work under my name and establish some cohesive brand, which I did, but after certain time a very obvious problem occurred. Even though most people and my design clients appreciate my illustrative style, I knew that artists and some art directors became a bit confused seeing me talking one day about my favorite colors and the other day teaching WordPress.

Since my illustration started growing (and overcoming my main office), I knew I need to state the difference between being a web designer/developer and illustrator. Additionally, I hope to grow my pattern collection and fashion/lifestyle illustration much more in 2012.

So, even though the design clients didn’t mind the cute, brainless posts about big eyes of Regina Spector, my techie vocabulary became confusing to visitors, who came to my website to only experience my art and illustration. Also, how do I maneuver art directors around such different topics discussed on the same website.

So one day I partitioned my main website and spilt the content between martaspendowska.com and polishlab.com.

PolishLab, from this moment, becomes my web, print design and online business advice hub, where I teach others about web and apps, whereas MartaSpendowska becomes my illustration platform.  This one is going to be much less formal and much more pink and orange. Oh well of course!

Now—should you do the same? And when. And why.

I’m currently working on a website for fantastic women, Amber McCue. She is a photographer and a coach. She contacted me some time ago asking for a basic advice and review of her website. Besides just some functional problems, I haven’t seen any “collaboration” between the two themes: coaching and photography. After talking a bit about Amber’s goals, I knew that she needs to state it very strongly —in her case the two services she provides are complementary. She can coach on it’s own, but she also coaches through photography by helping women to gain confidence. So, as you see, even though her two offerings were kind of similar to mine, I advised her to connect them even more and make sure it’s strongly stated.
Amber doesn’t need to split her website, she should capitalize on both working on the same online platform.

If, on the other hand, Amber’s photography would be focused on landscapes or foliage and had nothing to do with her coaching sessions, she should split it. By keeping them together, she would confuse the clients and dilute her message.

I adore work of Emilie from Puttylike. She was one of the first people that showed me what multi-potentiality is. She was the one, who told me: hey, there are people like you out there, restless, creative seekers juggling multiple interests. And it’s ok. Not every hobby becomes a business, but you get my point. Or Emilie’s. Sometimes, or most of the times you can definitely maintain one website that works on many levels and present several topics, just because they enrich the message. Sometimes though, it can weaken it. Emilie decided to never commit to one career path, but if you read her website carefully you’ll see how focused she is. Even though, in her About page, she says she’s confused twenty-something.

My final advice is to look closer into your business model and figure out, who is your client. Do they mind being updated on different kind of topics, from food to social media? Do they skip half of your posts and never sign up for emails because of the content they don’t care about?

If in doubt, ask them directly and use some survey monkey. 

Over to you!