Thanks very much for your responses I really appreciate them.
CleverPhd - we wouldn’t be giving total control of the domain away as we would design it, maintain it and add and remove products when we see fit. But I totally agree with you about them gaining a higher volume of organic and direct traffic and potentially doing what they want with it.
If they did decide not to sell our products it would mean ending the contract we have after an allotted time frame and either finding a new partner to design a new website and entering in a similar deal with them or start their own e-commerce operation which logistically is a huge undertaking, its taken us 15 years to build up relationships and offer the amount of products we sell so it’s not a viable option (at the minute anyway).
From the initial meeting they did stress that they didn’t want to run their online shop themselves and were happy to take a commission. They also gave a firm commitment to push the site through various media channels and their reach is huge. You said we would be at a disadvantage if the set up works out good or bad but either way we would be gaining more sales, just not increasing our brand reach through that channel. So in essence wouldn’t you just see it as separate revenue stream we could live without even if it fell apart?
Dimitri – Thanks, it looks like if we go ahead I’ll be insisting on canonical tags!
Don – Cheers for the alternatives and the offer to PM you.
I really appreciate the insight guys!
Rich