Brand Websites Sell the Product/Service. Franchise Development Websites Sell the Opportunity.

For brands that are actively investing in franchise growth, we recommend a dedicated franchise development website.

The consumer website and franchise development website serve different audiences and different goals. Separating them allows the franchise opportunity to have its own navigation, messaging, content strategy, analytics, conversion paths, and room to grow.

The consumer website can still prominently link to the franchise development website so the two properties support one another.

The challenge is that the consumer website is usually designed around customer needs. Its navigation, calls to action, promotions, location pages, ecommerce functions, booking systems, and content strategy are built for people buying the brand's products or services.

Aspiring franchisees benefit from a website built specifically around their questions and decision-making process. Keep in mind that the franchising marketplace is significantly larger than your brand, so when you're expanding into areas where you don't yet have locations, the potential buyers in that region don't yet know who you are or why they should invest in your brand.

There is no ideal page count. The website should have enough depth to answer the important questions a qualified prospective franchisee is likely to ask.

Established franchise systems may need substantially more content covering the opportunity, investment, support, franchisee stories, leadership, markets, FAQs, resources, articles, and other areas.

We determine the website structure based on the buyer journey rather than choosing an arbitrary number of pages.

Franchise development websites should address the franchise opportunity, business model, investment, qualifications, training and support, leadership, franchisee experience, development process, and frequently asked questions for starters.

Depending on the franchise system, the site may also include available markets, videos, franchise articles, educational resources, franchisee interviews, industry information, news, events, and campaign-specific landing pages.

A landing page is designed to communicate a focused message and encourage a specific action.

That can be useful for advertising campaigns, but buying a franchise is a high-consideration decision.

Prospective franchisees often want to explore multiple topics, compare information, revisit the website, share pages with others, and research the opportunity before submitting an inquiry.

Yes, particularly if organic search is part of your long-term franchise development strategy.

Franchise SEO can include the primary opportunity pages as well as articles, FAQs, industry content, market-specific information, and educational resources.

A dedicated development website also gives the franchisor an opportunity to build a growing body of search-focused franchising content without mixing franchise recruitment topics into a consumer website.

Campaign landing pages can be extremely useful for paid search, paid social, market-specific campaigns, franchise portals, email campaigns, and other targeted marketing efforts.

We view those pages as part of a larger franchise development ecosystem, and develop them as needed. The landing page creates a focused entry point. The broader development website gives prospects somewhere to continue their research.

This depends on the CRM and your development process, providing an API or connection, but many CRM systems on the market can pass prospect information directly into your franchise CRM or lead-management system.

Tracking can also be configured to help identify lead sources, campaigns, and other marketing information that may be useful to the development team.

Core pages should be reviewed whenever there are meaningful changes to the franchise program, investment information, development process, leadership, support structure, available markets, or other important details.

Ongoing articles, franchisee stories, videos, FAQs, company news, and educational resources should be added regularly as part of the franchise marketing strategy. A development website should not be treated as something that is launched and then left untouched for several years.

Usually, yes, but it does not need to duplicate the consumer website. The franchise development site should clearly feel like part of the same brand while being designed around a different audience and purpose. 

Brand elements such as typography, colors, photography, messaging, and visual identity can carry across both properties while the information architecture and user experience remain specific to franchise development.

Yes. In many cases, valuable content, rankings, analytics, tracking systems, CRM connections, advertising campaigns, and existing franchise assets can be preserved or improved during a rebuild.

We evaluate what is already working, what should remain, what needs to change, and what is missing before determining the structure of the new website.