Many people don’t start out with the goal of selling merchandise on their websites. Over time, you may decide to add an e-commerce store to your site. Creating a subdomain may be the best option for growing your business online and selling products your audience will love.

What is a Subdomain?

Subdomains are created after the main domain is purchased for a website. Subdomains allow you to set up complete websites that run alongside the main site. They’re also helpful for organizing and navigating to different parts of your website.

For example, your primary website is yoursite.com. A subdomain would be store.yoursite.com. The subdomain keeps the main domain under your primary domain but allows you to add a prefix and create multiple sites.

Other uses for a subdomain could include:

• Creating different language versions of a website (en.yoursite.com),
• Creating a mobile version of a website (m.yoursite.com)
• Creating a store or blog for an existing business website

How Does It Benefit my Store?

Many companies that branch out into e-commerce use a subdomain to handle transactions. For your store, using subdomains can help you organize your site. It allows you to create different experiences for different target audiences. Just like you can add menus and storefronts to your GearLaunch store, you can create specialized stores using subdomains.

For example:

• animals.yoursite.com might target pet owners, animal enthusiasts, or veterinarians.
• outdoors.yoursite.com might target hikers, explorers, or conservationists.
• hunters.yoursite.com might target hunters, fishers, or farmers.

While there will be overlaps in those target audiences, you can see how someone interested in pets might be turned off by a site targeting the hunters. Building a personalized experience for different audiences can improve your customers’ experience and improve your store’s conversion rates.

Other Benefits of a Subdomain

• Subdomains are free with your already purchased domain
• They’re simple to add to your site
• A subdomain linked to an already ranking site gets indexed quickly and benefits from the main domain’s rankings
• Helps establish brand awareness and brand alignment
• Increases your online presence

How to Create a Subdomain

With so many considerations, it’s often best to set up a subdomain for an e-commerce store. If you’re ready to set up a GearLaunch powered e-commerce store on a website you already own, creating one is the best way to get started selling merch online.

If you don’t already have a primary domain, you will need to create one before you can create a subdomain.

There are multiple ways to create one for your website. Once you have chosen the one you want, you’ll need to go to your domain registrar site and add the DNS records we provide you for your subdomain. After you’ve added the required DNS records needed for GearLaunch, you’ll be ready to go! Get started with GearLaunch here.

Need help setting up your GearLaunch subdomain? Contact us at support@gearlaunch.com and we’ll be happy to assist!

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