Should a company's online tool be hosted on their own domain?

[APM-SEO]

Our company is developing a web-based tool that will provide good value for its users and generate leads for us. The tool is large enough in scope and different enough than the main service that we provide that we're considering putting it on its own domain.

I have two questions:

1. Does it behoove a company to put their online tool on a separate domain if the tool is large enough in scope and different enough from their website's core function / business's core service? (Examples of this would be Hubspot's Marketing Grader or Open Site Explorer before Moz rolled it back into its domain.)

2. If yes, should the domain name a) describe the function of the tool or b) build a brand for the tool itself?

Thanks for your help!

[CleverPhD]

I guess I would have to see the site and the tool to understand your point as it does not make sense if you would make a tool that is unrelated to your core business as that would take away from your core business structure.

I would do some testing with some of your users / audience to see what they think.  It may or may not be jarring to them and could help you with your answer in what direction on where to go.

[APM-SEO]

Thanks, CleverPhD. Very well thought out response.

Our concern is that having a tool that is unrelated to our business's core service and our website's core function will be confusing for people who land on the tool, and therefore make them less likely to use it than if it were on its own domain. From a user experience standpoint, we are concerned that some visitors wouldn't want to use a tool that does X on a website that revolves around Y. It's possible that some of the visitors who find this difference jarring will be unlikely to remember our brand/domain name and visit our website again in the future. Anecdotally, I've bounced off tools on sites I gauged to be unrelated to the topic I was researching.

But, as you pointed out, the SEO, branding, PR and cognitive load benefits of keeping the tool on our domain are quite strong. It seems you could easily argue these benefits would outweigh the negative impact of the possible user confusion I described in the above paragraph.

Again, thanks for your help.

[MoosaHemani]

CleverPhD, you nailed it in detail.

[CleverPhD]

This is similar to the question, blog on a different subdomain vs a folder.  Most SEOs would agree that putting a blog in a folder is better as any links to the blog builds the domain authority of the entire domain.  Rising tides raises all ships.

Likewise, I think it is telling that Moz rolled OSE under the main moz.com domain.  Why? I would guess (Disclaimer: this is just my guess as I do not speak for Moz) for the same reason of consolidating domain authority, but also I think it makes sense from a branding perspective.   Why would you want to spend all this time creating a tool and getting people to remember another domain name when you could be piggybacking off the fact that they already know your domain name to start with and so with any press around the new tool your main domain name is being talked about (let alone linked to).

I think in most cases a separate domain or subdomain is at the suggestion of developers to make it easier to develop on a separate server etc.  That is technical hurdle that should not drive the answer of what is best for your users and for branding.

One domain name is hard enough to remember, why make people remember another one?  Keep it simple. Reduce cognitive load.    Plus, if the new tool goes viral and is on your main domain, your main domain is going viral as well.

Unless you are trying to build a separate company with a separate brand, then you might go the separate domain route.