The Microsite Debate Con't

Replies to This ADM Discussion

Permalink Reply by Philip Zelinger on March 15, 2010 at 8:29am

To my mind, micro-sites are intended to attract a targeted audience with specific needs. The increased relevancy of the limited content posted on the micro-site vs. your main website home page should address their specialized interests, and the enhanced transparency accomplished by not cluttering the information with unrelated issues - such as what they might find if the information was on a landing page within your main website - is the most common use of micro-sites as a directed destination vs. a dealers home page or dedicated internal landing page. Other examples of this targeted use could be to anchor coupons, special offers, specialized groups like off-road clubs -- you get the idea.

Also, if the micro-site is properly engineered with specialized search words, meta tags, URL title, page descriptions and other S.E.O. focused efforts then even the S.E.M. plan will be less expensive since the "competition" for this specialized audience and related search words or phrases will be competing with a smaller pool of sites and consumers.

Does that answer your question?

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Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on March 15, 2010 at 9:00am

I have been using microsites for 10 years and my first response to dealers is usually around the concept of "Micro" as in highly focused on a particular subject or purpose and not "General Purpose" in nature, such as a dealer's eCommerce site. Think of the use of the term "Micromanaging" which normally conveys the concept of a General Manager telling an F&I manager how to line up forms in their printer... Microsites are for micromanaging a particular subject. A good example of a microsite is those used by dealers for Special Finance. This is a topic that only applies to a few car shoppers, but is a critical subject area for those it applies to... Perfect for a microsite. or how about a new model introduction? This is a subject which deserves its own dedicated and focused website, a microsite relative to the dealer's own all purpose eCommerce or Community sites.

Which brings me to another point, when is a microsite other than the dealer's primary website NOT a microsite? When the additional site goes beyond a specific or "micro" subject area. For example, the dealership communities my team creates for dealers, such as www.AnciraCommunity.com or www.KellyCarCommunity.com are NOT microsites because they are full featured social networks with a variety of applications, features and subject areas. The real essence of a microsite is its narrow and laser focused scope of topic.

My personal favorite microsites, although NOT the best performing ones, are the model-specific microsites which focus on one particular model line... This allows dealers to provide car buyers who know what they want as far as the model with a comprehensive and clearly focused website that covers all aspects of a specific model line of vehicles.

As for the other benefits of microsites... They are too obvious at this point, but just as obviously, the SEO benefits are a function of the right content and site architecture to make that content available to the search engine robots or spiders. Just as obviously, if a microsite is focused on Ford F-150 pickup trucks and has everything a consumer ever wanted to know about Ford F-150 trucks, then it SHOULD rank higher than ANY all purpose Ford dealer website in relevance and the commensurate SERP listings.

In regards to conversions, well OF COURSE a microsite has a higher conversion rate for people who visit and are interested in the specific topic area the microsite is LASER FOCUSED ON! What else would you expect?!?!

Think about the typical Corvette buyer... Is he going to be more engaged with a Chevy Dealer website that also covers Cobalts, Tahoes, Silverados and the coupons for $19.95 oil changes... OR... The microsite that is all about Corvettes, shows all the relevant specifications, facts, figures, road tests, photos of Corvettes in action and a listing of all Corvettes in stock, both new and used, as well as those Corvettes the dealer has on order and in the pipeline? The answers are obvious and so is the value of multiple microsites to car dealers.

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Permalink Reply by Terrence Gordon on March 15, 2010 at 12:25pm

Agreed. I copied a portion of the Wikipedia definition below, which concurs with Ralph and Phillip in regards to a "specified focus".

The problem still remains - heavy confusion surrounding dealers regarding the PURPOSE of a microsite. Most of the dealers I speak with are simply interested in launching a "secondary website" with all their inventory but with limited functionality and either cloaked or missing branding simply to get additional SEO rankings. These sites are basically dumbed-down versions of their primary website with no specific topic, group of products or reasoning other than "I must be on the 1st page of Google at all costs".


Wikipedia:
A microsite, also known as a minisite or weblet, is an Internet web design term referring to an individual web page or cluster of pages which are meant to function as an auxiliary supplement to a primary website. The microsite's main landing page most likely has its own domain name or subdomain.
They are typically used to add a specialized group of information either editorial or commercial. Such sites may be linked in to a main site or not or taken completely off a site's server when the site is used for a temporary purpose. The main distinction of a microsite versus its parent site is its purpose and specific cohesiveness as compared to the microsite's broader overall parent website.

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Permalink Reply by ANTHONY JAMES on March 15, 2010 at 3:07pm

A better way to increase to about 50,000 more views a month to your site. Is a news release it puts over 500 pages up with your website to include 1-10 pages all over Google, MSN, Yahoo. Look at my site www.smaalliance.com read about the news release program. Auto Hot Spots

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Permalink Reply by Terrence Gordon on March 15, 2010 at 3:14pm

Anthony,

With respect - I have no idea what you are talking about.

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Permalink Reply by ANTHONY JAMES on March 15, 2010 at 3:21pm

Its a better program then building other sites. Micro-sites don't get you where you want to be for some time. News Release program gets you front page of Google in 48 hours and keeps you there.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Rushing on March 15, 2010 at 3:33pm

Micro sites can be constructed and ranking in less than 48 hours. PR services can bring traffic and are a great way to pump relevance in a lot of directions, including to microsites.

A press release strategy is an ongoing process which if ignored reduces its effectiveness. News releases lose their power as time passes. They have an expiration date much like a gallon of milk.

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Permalink Reply by Philip Zelinger on March 15, 2010 at 3:34pm

Anthony,

Any member of ADM starts out with my respect, and I want to carefully phrase my reply on the same note as Terrence -- so, with all due respect, I am not sure that you know what you are talking about either?

I visited the site that you referenced and was surprised to see that it's solution had nothing to do with this post on micro-sites. To the contrary, it seemed to suggest that a manual insertion of a dealer's inventory into established online inventory marketing platforms would somehow drive 50,000 views to a dealer's site because the people doing the posting have word skills that are superior to other applications that utilize alogorithms and artificial intelligence with automated integration processes that mirror the search engine's algorithms to source traffic from the very same sites??

I will defer to my fellow ADM professionals to determine if they want to challenge your confidence in people over process and even your assumptions that third party platforms -- no matter how diverse -- have the power to drive qualified traffic to a dealer's site without any other enhancements to their relevency or transparency to their already dated business models when compared to newer marketing platforms that integrate the power of social networking communities and more scalable solutions.

I could be wrong -- but I don't think so!

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Permalink Reply by Philip Zelinger on March 15, 2010 at 4:12pm

Anthony,

First, my apologies if I came off too strong in my first reply. After reading it I realize that you may take my point the wrong way. Frankly, it was my friend Paul that correctly commented that a Press Release program is a vlauable tool to extend a message that can drive traffic back to a properly embedded dealer link -- micro-site or otherwise -- however, the site that you referenced describes posting vehicles manually on third party inventory sites with no reference to PR channels. Of course, again Paul is correct in that micro-sites can be placed almost as quickly as a PR with a a much longer shelf life so I still don't see them as an alternative to a micro-site so where does the PR reference fit into your solution?

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Permalink Reply by Terrence Gordon on March 15, 2010 at 4:24pm

PR is valuable, but I'm having trouble with the 50,000 monthly views number. I've personally done PR for a number of large dealers and dealer groups and have never seen a number this large for local dealers...especially on an ongoing basis. I also believe the engines are not indexing outdated releases the way they used to...they are pushing them more towards the News section of the SERPS in efforts for more real-time relevance. This necessitates routine releases to stay in the SERPS - a timely and costly process.

Anthony, I would love to be proven wrong if you have stats to back it up.

But aside - PR and Microsites are completely separate marketing initiatives used for different purposes (IMO).

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Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on March 15, 2010 at 5:00pm

Phil - I know they must be out there, but I have yet to find a third party classified inventory listing site that provides the kind of genuine story telling and descriptive text narrative that gets customer to engage. In fact, services like what Paul Rushing offers are far more valuable than simply sending your inventory data feeds off into the 3rd party publisher wild blue yonder because they will spiff up a listing and tell the story in words that indicate a human being wrote it.

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Permalink Reply by David Johnson on March 15, 2010 at 5:42pm

I totally agree, microsites have a much longer shelf life and if designed correctly can really get people to engage.

While a PR campaign is worthwhile, it will never be able to replace a properly executed microsite.

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