The Skinny on Microsites

Flickr photo credit: dawnzy58

Let’s say your organization already has a website, but you have a project that needs some extra attention. It might be a capital campaign, a special event, a call for action, volunteering opportunities, a new publication, or a resource that is just aching to stand out from your general site. Consider the use of microsites, online sites that supplement an organization’s primary web presence. Microsites highlight a product or service associated with an organization and is usually accessed at its own unique web address

Microsites became popular in the marketing community to tout new products and to house extensive marketing campaigns. Nonprofits and social service organizations are using microsites to engage with their communities in powerful ways.

Consider, for example, Temple Sinai in Oakland, California. The synagogue uses microsites for its capital campaign, and for its big Spring Fling fundraiser. As you can see, general information is available for both events on the primary site with additional, more focused details available on the customized microsites:

Primary site: Temple Sinai Expansion Project
Microsite: Temple Sinai’s Campus Expansion Project

Primary site: Spring Fling Fundraiser
Microsite: Temple Sinai Spring Fling – March Madness

Potential benefits of a microsite:

• Provides more specific information about a product, service, or opportunity than is found at your organization’s primary site
• Targets niche audiences who might otherwise not get noticed on your primary site
• Opportunities to create and embed niche content, including multimedia and other digital storytelling techniques
• Specific departments of an organization can “own” the site and respond quickly to changes and visitor feedback
• Use of keywords facilitates better search engine rankings
• Easier for visitors to bookmark that specific website rather than a particular page on the primary site

Here’s another reason for entertaining microsites: Is your organization thinking about upping the ante with your website, but isn’t quite ready to make the leap? A microsite might be one way to minimize perceived risks and gain valuable feedback by using it to implement incremental changes as you refine your vision and further develop your organization’s web strategy.

Learn More:

The Micro-Site Isn’t Dead. (It’s Just Not Useful) from Logic+Emotion
Microsites are Becoming a Macro Idea from Direct