Domains and Subdomains

Usage of Domain or Subdomain Names

The CloudSuite platform can host multiple websites and webshops on unique URLs. This is possible on a single domain or on multiple toplevel or sublevel domains.

Multi-Shop

The CloudSuite platform supports the hosting of multiple shops within one environment. There are different configuration options, depending on your use case and goals.

If you have multiple shops or websites within CloudSuite, these are accessible with unique domain names. This can be a top-level domain such as yourname.com, but also a subdomain such as shop.yourname.com. Opening additional shops as a variant of an existing shop is easy, since you inherit all settings of the main shop. Alternatively, you can choose to overrule certain settings, such as:

• Catalog: in case you want to sell another or limited assortment of goods.
• Shop theme: gives each subdomain its own look and feel.
• Payment configuration: define a different payment provider or payment method.
• Email settings: to identify the subdomain.

Country-specific Top-level Domain

Shops can be one-on-one related to a company, or you can have different shops for each company. For an international webshop, you can even set up a shop in different countries linked to one company.

A (sub)domain name can also distinguish shops. This is particularly useful if you use several top-level domains such as .nl, .be, .fr and .de.

Enterprise Domain

Another option is to host multiple country shops from a single top-level domain such as yourname.com. Such a so-called enterprise domain brings certain SEO advantages compared with country-specific top-level domains.

For example, hosting all shops on a single domain generates a general “link-building” status at search engines such as Google. The single top-level domain already has a link-building status, from which new country shops can benefit. However, if you open a new shop on a new top-level domain, you start from scratch. It takes time to reach a certain status.

Enterprise domain URL set-up:

https://yourshop.com/nl-nl/ https://yourshop.com/fr-be/

In this example, we distinguish between languages per shop using the country code followed by a language code.

Note: a general top-level domain is not always the best solution for international expansion. Country-specific domains might gain more trust with local customers.

One Shop Serving Multiple Countries

When you make deliveries to other countries only occasionally, you could consider configuring one webshop with a selection of multiple countries in the checkout. When export markets become a more important part of your eCommerce strategy, a separate shop for each country is then the next step.

Identifying the country can be done in multiple ways:

• Top-level domain per country, e.g. yourshop.nl or yourshop.de
• Single top-level domain with subdirectory, e.g. yourshop.com/nl-NL or yourshop.com/de-DE
• Top-level domain with subdomains, e.g. nl.yourshop.com or de.yourshop.com

For shops that support multiple countries, it is possible to have specific settings per country that can overrule the standard shop settings. Think of:

• Order costs & delivery options
• Delivery schemes for calculating possible delivery dates
• Payment methods

Shop per Region/Language Combination

It is possible to set up a shop for each country-language combination or offer multiple languages in one shop. In short:

• Add multiple languages in one shop.
• Create country-specific shops with their related language options.

The CloudSuite platform supports any region and language combination, based on the ISO 639-1 codes. These codes define the language and region codes, e.g. ./sitename/en-DE or ./sitename/de-DE. You can add unique translations for all webshop content, including product texts, and CloudSuite Admin content for all available region-language combinations in your shop.

The formatting of currencies, amounts, and dates is based on the default language at shop level or overruled at user level.