A Beginner's Guide to Microsites

What Are Microsites?

In this new digital era, most companies hold a website to their credit to have a digital presence. This holds in the case of traditional business sectors also. The website is a great corridor to enhance and grow business by leaps, by increasing traffic. It is a wonderful platform to share brand values, showcase product catalog to grow sales.

What if you want to experiment with a new product launch? What if you wish to test the waters before the product launch? How to gauge the customer review and interest outside the website? How to publish an ad which does not fit into normal website design?

The answer to all the above queries is to build a Microsite. Creating focused high-quality web content is one of the best practices in the new Digi era. Microsite building is one of the best practices to upscale web traffic towards a new launch. This concept would interest the marketing team and sales team to dabble new ideas. Let’s understand each aspect of building a microsite and microsite definition.

A Microsite is a single page or a group of web pages to promote a new idea or product outside a normal website domain. This content focuses on a handful of features or, products with its URL. The site will have a different web structure and, appearance than the company website.

A microsite is a specific product website to promote products, events, or campaigns. A microsite is usually hosted in a different URL or on a subdomain rather than the company website. For pure marketing, a website without an eCommerce presence or sales point may be used. Microsites enriched with information is focused on engaging customers to incite curiosity. The contents are generally interactive and fun based to strike connect with customers.

Moreover, a microsite doesn't provide information about the parent company. They don't include details like 'About Us', 'Vision', 'Team members', etc.

Let's understand the concept by some microsite examples. Mercedes has a different microsite specific for their S class cars. Mercedes has launched this microsite not under the main domain or subdomain.

Some Essential eCommerce Microsite Tips

Difference Between Microsites and Landing Pages

The microsite and landing page is almost similar to the fact that both are simpler than a website. They are mainly utilized for new product launch, campaigns, or events. They are temporary with a specified duration.

The microsite and landing page differs in the number of pages. A landing page is single page content. On the contrary, the microsite contains many pages. The landing page is linked to the parent website but the microsite domain is different.

Opportunity for Bigger Contracts

Some of the visitors get to know the parent company through microsite interaction. After the first interaction, people can decide to migrate and use the parent website for future use.

Keep It Simple

You can design and create a microsite simple and easy to use. Don't clutter the page with irrelevant information to confuse the visitors. Focus and encourage customers towards a buying decision and later purchase the products.

What are the Benefits of Utilizing Microsites?

Why Consider Microsites?

Microsites are an excellent way to promote brands apart from the brand company. The microsite offers the freedom to structure the webspace as per brand features. You can design the pages different from the parent website. The new microsite captivates the artistic and creative ideas along with useful information. This feature allows you to absorb information and manage interesting content more easily.

Microsite optimized with exact phrases and keywords to target a specific audience. They offer to target a population or geography with a campaign.

  • Targeted Campaigns: A microsite allows brands to convey specific content to a targeted audience.
  • Lead Generation: They offer to generate high potential leads to build a business and create awareness.
  • Brand Awareness: Microsite helps companies to build brand awareness on the internet through their URL.
  • Virality Potential: Engaging content and interactive messages create buzz and curiosity among customers. A microsite provides emphasis and a clear presentation of your particular brand.
  • SEO for Niche Keywords: All microsite is on its website with a different URL. Since it has a unique URL and a different domain from the parent company, it is easily accessible. People can remember easily and find your new product faster and quicker. Your microsite contains all essential keywords rich content accessible to all search engines. This way microsite attains better search engine ranking for a particular keyword.
  • Easy to Manage: You can run a targeted campaign using a microsite dedicated to geography. Since a microsite has few pages it is easy to develop and design. Less number of people are required to work to create and launch a microsite. This makes it a cost-efficient, time, and effort saving activity to attract customers.
Delivering Tailored Experiences to Each Target Audience

eCommerce Microsite Best Practices

You must have heard UI (User Interface) numerous times simultaneously when UX is talked of. Both these terms are usually used together and sometimes also interchangeably. However, the User interface and user experience are not the same.

User Experience is a broader term that does not comprise of one element only. Usability and user interface are used interchangeably for user experience; they are only a part of it. The user interface is specifically about the outlook of a product, including its icons, colors, and typography, whereas user experience involves more than just that. A UX design focuses on the overall internal and external features of a product as well alongside the outlook.

UX design is a complex procedure as it involves all the steps of user-friendly design from the analysis, research, and planning, to testing the final product. It is driven by 7 factors that must be considered while you design products based on the UX.

Tell a Story

Microsite focus to target specific audiences and people with their interactive messages. You can create content according to the audience and according to people's needs. Suppose you wish to launch a product for teachers and it could be from primary to university levels. Each of them must be using different tools to interact with students. You can launch a partitioned microsite for each level of teachers with your product. Targeting high school teachers with different storyboards and university teachers another way. This process increases the conversion rate and satisfies the investment.

Audience-Based Offers

Sometimes some offers or promotions are not appreciated by a few visitor segments. Small offers may not interest big business owners instead they look at package plans. Creating general content will beat the purpose of a microsite. Launch content according to the target audience.

A/B Testing

Build a microsite that is easy to use and manage. Remember not to compromise on the performance of microsite during promotion, CTA, etc. You can run an A/B test to gauge the performance and conversion rates after the microsite launch.

Pay Attention to Reviews

Prioritize to find as many reviews and feedback after the launch of the product launch. This way you can identify the specific review/feedback from the targeted audience. If your microsite targets students, give attention to reviews from the students. Then corroborate all those reviews to find methods to convert them as customers.

Reasons why Microsites Could Be a Good Fit for Your Project

Are Microsites Right for You?

1 User experience is a whole huge universe with a lot to explore and experience. It is the UX designer's job to dig out all the possible elements to enhance user experience and improve usability. A UX designer ensures a user-friendly design by these few factors that helps deliver the right product

  • Flexibility: Microsite is a flexible model to display features than utilizing a website.
  • Conversion: Limited number of CTA and contents makes it easy to load and faster to download. This option makes it easier for customers to take quick action easily.
  • Storytelling: Microsite is an interactive medium to share brand stories and user experiences.
  • Experimentation: Microsite is an efficient method to do comparison tests. They help to build a brand with a new perspective. You can create a completely new look and feel of the same brand to attract a variety of customers than traditional customers.
  • SEO Advantage: Every microsite has a unique URL different than the parent website. Provide a URL that is easy to remember with strategic keywords. The keyword-rich page helps to rank the site with a better ranking than the main website.
  • Trendy: Microsite is trendy and accepted by all generations to view new features.

Microsite emphasis on specific products and features and attract potential customers. It offers customers an easy shopping experience and also creates a buzz among them. Since microsites are easy to design according to the brand requirements it is easy to use. They offer greater flexibility to promote brands and increase conversion.