Microsite

Microsites help create light, focused, and impactful experiences for your audience. This entry takes a closer look at what a microsite is and its role in catering to the changing customer demands. You’ll learn the main purpose of these websites. If you're planning to create one for your business, you’ll also understand how it works and its possible limitations.

What does microsite mean?

It is a single or several smaller web pages that are separate from the brand’s original website and used for more specific marketing campaigns. Ideally, a microsite has its own domain and a unique URL from the original website, and its branding methods can also be completely different from the original domain. 

However, in some exceptional cases, this website can be integrated into the original website. This is to quickly build attention and focus on the main site without completely diverting the users to an external domain.

A microsite works best when they are heavily populated with diverse content that caters to a specific objective or a target audience. Unlike an ordinary webpage, it mainly flourishes on engagement by integrating different content formats such as testimonials, behind-the-scenes vlogs, or even bite-sized videos. This helps in building a stronger and deeper connection with the audience, which eventually brings more leads that will increase the overall brand reputation.

The main purpose of a microsite

To use it effectively for your brand, you have to thoroughly understand the key purposes of a microsite. With a targeted and concentrated approach, it can help brands and developers send out a message with a broader impact and be free from the distractions of the main website.

These domains are mainly used in marketing to create awareness and drive meaningful conversations to make short campaigns successful. The main purpose of a microsite is often experimentation. Brands use them to test new content strategies or design elements. This allows them to see what works without changing the main website. They also help create highly targeted content as they focus on specific audiences based on interests, behaviours, and demographics.

Lastly, these websites are great if the brand wants to focus on precision in highlighting a single topic and its marketing efforts. They leave a stronger impression on the audience and achieve specific marketing goals that are otherwise harder to achieve with a single website.

How to create a microsite?

If you plan to create a microsite, you are not just simply launching a webpage but working towards creating an experience that is focus-driven, goal-oriented, and that can capture maximum attention. This section will take you through some of the key steps on how this domain works. This will also help you understand its importance in increasing engagement and bringing more conversions.

1. Have a clear objective - Before you start building a microsite, you need to have a clear purpose in mind. It can be anything, such as a campaign launch or a product promotion. However, it should be specific and achievable.
2. Choose your domain or subdomain - Decide whether the site will be on a subdomain or a domain. It is for easy identification and accessibility.
3. Simplicity and focus - A microsite should be clean and have a specific design. You can make a few important pages instead of dozens of them. 
4. Create targeted content - Have relevant and engaging content on your site. Remember that it should align with your goal and have a clear journey for users. 
5. Strong CTAs - Your call-to-action should be bold and visible, and it doesn't matter if it's simply registering or filling out a form. Your microsite should lead people to these actions. 
6. Add tracking and analytics options - Use these tools to see how users are reacting to your page. It will help you develop further strategies.
7. Test the microsite - Before you go live, make sure you test it to ensure it has a smooth performance. It will give you an opportunity to solve bugs and issues. 
8. Promotion - If everything is alright, then start sharing your website on social media, emails, or even paid ads to bring more traffic and also engagement.

Possible challenges of using a microsite

Now that the benefits of having a microsite are clear, its challenges should also not be overlooked. Understanding them is very important for planning and running a successful marketing strategy. This section will list out a few challenges that businesses encounter while managing these websites.

• They can sometimes divert the traffic from the main website, because users might spend more time on the microsite, as they are more focused and interactive. 
• These pages are smaller compared to the original ones, and it can sometimes be a challenge to optimise them for specific keywords or terms. They often struggle to even come in the ranking, and this limits their visibility in search results. 
• Creation and maintenance of a microsite can be costly and very time-consuming. Even though they are smaller in size, they require frequent updates along with special design efforts that add to the overall costs.
• Microsites focus mainly on the specific campaigns or topics that don't fully convey the brand message and its identity. This can end up diverting the entire brand message in the chaos of the competition. It will also reduce the overall benefits that it can get otherwise from a stable online brand presence.
• It can confuse your users if they aren’t completely aware of the company’s online presence. They might find it difficult to go through this stand-alone without any prior notice from the business.
• A microsite can sometimes be hard to manage because they aren't a part of the main domain. It might lead to duplicate content postings, which can negatively impact the entire user experience and its SEO performance.