Microsites

Micrositesor minisites, as they're sometimes calledare small websites (5 to 10 pages) used to promote a particular product or service, or even promotion or contest. Microsites have their own separate URL. They do not contain the full navigation of the home site; they are self-contained websites.

A microsite is not a landing page. A landing page is final-destination page connected to an email promotion or a search-engine marketing ad, and is a page on the full home site of an online storefront. A microsite can be a useful marketing tool. Suppose that you want to promote one particular product or line of products. You can use the microsite with its own navigation to better display and promote the need to buy a product or service. This gives you a more powerful tool to focus on a product or promotion and explain it in detail without the distractions of the other navigation on your home website.

Microsites can also be promoted and used to sign up people for sweepstakes and contests when you would need more than one pagebeyond your normal product or service pagesto describe the award (usually your own product or service) and the rules of the contest or sweepstakes. Microsites are generally only temporary and are removed after a particular promotion has ended.

160 Characters (www.mobilefriendly.org/next.htm) is an example of a microsite that is used and updated with the latest news of the industry. Such a microsite is promoted separatelyin search engines, for exampleas an evolving-content page. Another example is a site for a financial services company. Suppose that you visited a website that contained a vast array of financial services, but you were interested only in car insurance. The home page of a large financial services company would have links and navigation to all its products and service.

But a microsite, where you can focus your offer clearly on one particular product without the possible confusion of other product offersor even the same offer at a better pricecan give you the flexibility to promote a special offer beyond your everyday storefront. That is, you can use microsites to test different offers and see which ones draw the best response.

Microsites also offer you the opportunity to have consumers view you as a specialist in a particular area, even if you offer a wide selection of products or service. This gives you a chance to promote to a more targeted audience that you couldn't with your main site. Going back to the financial services example, trying to be all things to all people doesn't help your unique selling position. But microsites can help.

When doing special discreet promotions, it might be better to use the microsite tool instead of squeezing all your promotions into the home page of your storefront. Show them you're a specialist in your field, that you understand the consumer's unique problem and have a unique solution. You can then gain their attention and trust before leading them into the core of your business offerings.

When you've drawn visitors to your site and have converted them into customers, the next challenge is to retain the customer your have worked so hard to attain. We cover that in the next chapter.