e see it a lot on the What are the benefits?
web. Companies displaying
menu after menu of There are plenty of reasons to
services and products. It’s a consider siphoning off some of
fine balance between appearing as your services and giving them
a “Jack of all, master of none”, their own site. In no particular
and showing your company is order, here are some points to
flexible and comprehensive in think about:
what it can offer.
Branding
Microsites can be used to address A microsite gives you the
this problem to a certain extent. opportunity to break away from
your corporate brand, which may
What is a Microsite? or may not be restricting the
growth of one of your products or
A microsite is a website services. For example, a bank
concentrated on a very specific might be launching a new account
product or service. They can aimed at student savings.
range in size from a single
landing page, to several linked Address the overcrowding issue
pages, to an interactive flash Offering site visitors too much
experience based around that choice and no obvious path
particular product or service. through your site from initial
Which one is best for you will landing to a call to action. So
depend on your industry, audience many times we see home pages
and your product, but a microsite which have yards and yards of
will help to bring focus and text, telling the visitors a
relevancy to a specific product hundred different messages. If it
or service. takes a visitor a long time to
find what they want, they will
become frustrated and leave. exactly what they want without
having to look for it. The whole
Delve into the details site can be geared towards a
With so many different products single call to action. Very
and services on one site it may useful for pay-per-click
not be possible to go into too campaigns.
much detail on each one. A
microsite offers the freedom to Search engines will like you
go into more details, like A domain name with relevant
specifications, history, press keywords in it, and a site which
coverage etc. is highly focussed around a
particular product or service
Communicate with your target will likely perform better in the
audience search engines
Your audience are more likely to
respond if the website seems Leverage direct mail campaigns
relevant to them in terms of A microsite can be created for
graphic design and the tone of mail campaigns as a landing
the copy. point, specifically designed for
the offer and reflecting the
Define you as a specialist branding, design and tone of the
A microsite will help to printed piece to aid the
establish you as an expert, which transition from one media type to
people will remember. Want to buy another. It is then also possible
pink envelopes? Then go to to track the performance of the
http://www.pinkenvelopes.com! campaign, by having a specific
microsite with web statistics
Highly targeted will give a lot of valuable
When visitors get to your site insight into the effectiveness of
they will be presented with the campaign.
the following statistic:
Product launches
They can be used for new “50% of visitors to any website
product/service launches. It will only look at the home page,
gives your product an identity of then leave”
its own and sets it apart from
everything you have done in the If your homepage is completely
past. relevant to them, contains enough
key information and includes an
I said that these were in no obvious call to action, then you
particular order, but I have will bypass this widely accepted
saved the best for last, which statistic.
should be self explanatory from
About the Author:
Steve Reed is Director at Deft Creative Ltd, which specialises in flash game design, and flash website design
Read more articles by:
Steve Reed
Article Source: www.iSnare.com 
