What Are Microsites and How Can You Use Them?
Marketing professionals face many challenges raising awareness in their digital marketing campaigns. While web pages for specific product launches or events might fit into your main site’s navigation, their important details are often lost in your large body of content. Plus, your main site’s brand standards may keep you from creating unique visitor experiences that your company’s new offerings deserve. That’s why leading brands use microsites to support their specific campaigns.
Microsites are bite-sized, standalone web pages or small websites with unique URLs and designs. Their content supplements your main website but doesn’t overlap or replace it. They may link out from your main website or live completely separately, depending on your strategy and objectives.
Although microsites were once less common because of the complexity of coding and launching single sites, a modern CMS like Squarespace Enterprise empowers brands to spin up microsites with ease. With accessibility comes advancement, and leading brands now regularly use them to improve storytelling, conduct A/B testing, optimize for local search, and more.
Characteristics of microsites (What are microsites?)
While they share some traits with your main site, microsites are generally unique and specialized. They’re frequently smaller experiences than your primary online hub and can be as small as a single landing page. They feature concise, purpose-driven content and a clear call-to-action (CTA) to improve conversion, all while keeping your main site free of information overload.
Microsites are designed to reach specific audiences or sub-audiences without distracting the customer bases that aren’t a good fit. Since microsites support outreach efforts targeting a unique group, you can tailor the design, CTAs, and value propositions to appeal specifically to their interests.
Because of their versatility, brands use microsites both internally and externally. Client-facing microsites could highlight an upcoming marketing event, anticipated product launch, or specific service. In-house uses may include employee communications, company history, employee events, or internal initiatives. To keep confidential information secure, employee-facing microsites often use SSO protection.
Microsites also have a unique domain or subdomain that gives them an identity outside of your main site hierarchy. These can be an entirely separate web address like www.micrositeexample.com or a subdomain that branches off of your main site like micrositeexample.mainsite.com.
Microsites vs websites
Microsites and main websites have some important distinctions, and understanding them sheds light on their appropriate use cases. Generally, microsites should focus on specific topics, products, or campaigns. Main site content should appeal to your broader audience.
Microsites usually have simplified, task-focused navigation, while main sites typically use broader navigation menus. A microsite may be limited to just the essential items that visitors need, such as “About,” “Features,” and “FAQ” sections. Main site menu options are usually broad to keep content accessible.
Because they’re highly targeted, microsites generally have a distinct personality that separates them from your main site. They use specialized designs, logos, and colors to look and feel original but also stick to the standards that make them yours.
To keep microsites on brand, many web teams rely on Enterprise templates to control key design elements and speed up the time to launch. If the team wants to add extra flair to the template, Fluid Engine makes it easy. The drag-and-drop editor empowers designers to experiment with new microsite designs regardless of experience level or tech skills. Plus, all changes can stay in page drafts to ensure that the published versions meet approved standards.
It’s a best practice that each microsite should have its own website manager. They’ll be responsible for both content and branding and require the appropriate permissions to update pages as needed.
How companies use microsites
Microsites enable your team to create unique visitor experiences for specialized use cases. There are many use cases where a microsite is beneficial, but brands most commonly leverage them to:
Boost marketing campaigns
Because they’re highly focused, microsites can increase visibility into your products or initiatives by serving as an all-in-one resource. With all of your content together, you’ll be able to quickly capture visitor attention and improve engagement.
Microsites can also highlight campaign promotions and discounts that may expire in the future or cause confusion for prospective customers who are stalled in the sales cycle. Because they live separately from your main site, you’ll be able to limit access appropriately and sunset them when they’re no longer relevant.
To manage the flow of traffic, your team can drive visitors to any microsite through targeted newsletters, lifecycle emails, or social posts. This keeps your microsites in front of the right visitors and away from others who may not benefit.
Promote product launches
Web teams also create microsites to spotlight new products or services. Their content only focuses on topics relevant to the new item and provides a comprehensive look at its value.
Their purpose is to provide microsite visitors with a distraction-free view of the upcoming offering and guide them through the marketing funnel. To achieve that goal, these microsites include detailed product/service descriptions, specifications, social proof, comparisons, and more.
Promote seasonal marketing
Frequently, organizations create holiday microsites to promote seasonal discounts and special offers. These can feature anything from festive versions of best sellers to limited-time-only promotions on flagship products.
Throughout the microsite, brands create a dedicated holiday experience through unique design, copy, and imagery. By showcasing limited-edition products and services in a festive experience away from your main site, you can generate demand through exclusivity.
Support events and conferences
Microsites are also perfect for creating central hubs for upcoming events and conferences. They can include event schedules, speaker profiles, registration forms, and venue details to simplify the attendee experience.
For example, Squarespace recently built a microsite for our virtual and in-person event, Circle Day, which brought together creatives from around the world. The experience specifically targeted a small but mighty part of the designer community, serving as the central platform for all details related to the summit.
Enhance local SEO
Microsites also give brands the freedom to create location-specific experiences optimized for search. If a business has multiple locations or serves a broad region, creating a local, SEO-focused microsite for each city improves visibility for customers searching in their area.
Marketers fill these microsites with the location-specific data that Google needs to rank them highly, including city keywords, employee contact information, and even local customer testimonials.
Share company news and updates
Organizations also use internal microsites to improve communication between leadership and employees. These sites can offer team news and updates, promote internal engagement initiatives and employee-only events, or share photos and videos from staff outings.
To ensure that only authorized visitors have access, it’s ideal to equip your microsite with SSO protection. Squarespace Enterprise integrates with your company’s existing SSO provider to offer greater security than using simple passwords.
Microsite best practices
The magic of microsites lies in their focus, so you’ll want to follow a few best practices to keep your digital experiences on the cutting edge.
Conversion is often the goal for microsites, so you’ll want to have frequent and clear CTAs placed throughout the pages. Whether you’re looking to encourage event registrations, capture leads for a new product, or increase internal newsletter signups, these will guide users toward completing your desired action.
Your microsites will also likely see lots of web traffic coming from mobile users, so you’ll also need to optimize your sites for their devices. This includes making sure navigation, images, and forms appear correctly across browsers as well as all types of tablets and phones.
It’s also recommended to incorporate A/B testing into your microsite publishing workflow to optimize your conversion rates. Through tools like Squarespace analytics, your team can monitor audience reception and test new copy or designs to increase visitor engagement.
For example, Colgate-Palmolive uses A/B testing to refine their Squarespace microsites before launching campaigns. Using Squarespace Enterprise, marketers create websites that test different landing page CTAs with target audiences. Then they measure conversion rates using Squarespace analytics.
It’s also best to use microsites with SSL certificates that encrypt data and provide a secure browsing experience. They’re crucial for user trust, SEO ranking, and browser security, so SSL’s are a key part of creating a great visitor experience. Squarespace domains automatically include SSL certificates, and an Enterprise account manager can expedite their generation.
Finally, if your microsite is supporting a high-profile event or product launch, you’ll want to ensure that your hosting can scale to handle traffic spikes. This prevents your microsite from breaking when an influx of visitors floods your site. To provide additional help, Squarespace Enterprise offers on-call support for major events to ensure your website performs optimally (available at an additional cost).
Microsites, macro impact
Microsites are powerful digital marketing tools that empower your team to create focused, unique experiences for visitors. When used either externally or internally, they can boost campaign performance, improve communication, and increase conversion rates.
While highly specialized, their potential uses are endless. Microsites can support product launches, upcoming events, corporate initiatives, seasonal promotions, and more, improving the visibility of your marketing campaigns for a targeted audience.
With a CMS like Squarespace Enterprise that uses templatized designs to control key elements, your team can quickly spin up high-quality pages to support your goals without any technical skills. Plus, with SSO support, SSL certificates, and scalable hosting, your microsites are ready for whatever your brand needs.