Minisite Designs – Different Types of Mini Sites & How to Make It Work

A minisite is the most effective tool to boost up your portfolio within a short space of time. A minisite design - if properly done - can bring you a good flow of cash every month. You can also link them with your main website and promote the same in an indirect way. A minisite is a small website containing only 1-2 pages though sometimes it may include more pages but that is a rarity. A minisite is meant to promote only a single product or related products in a single group and mainly focused on how to increase sale. However, there are multiple types of minisites depending on the purpose they serve. Here are a few of them:

·         Information Mini Sites: Such type of minisite is built to cover a particular product, service or topic in order to dish out valuable information to e-crowd. The webmasters usually place amazon, adsense and other popular affiliate links on these sites and hope that a certain percentage of their target visitors will click on them.

·         Tool Mini Sites: There are thousands of free scripts easily available to download and allow you to develop a minisite with a useful tool. For example, the intending minisite designers can easily download a script for weight conversion and develop a minisite design that allows the visitors to utilize the tool. You can also place advertisements around these tools.

·         Product Mini Sites: These minisites give reviews about one particular product. They are created to target a particular affiliate item. For example, if you want to generate more sales on a website selling anti-wrinkle cream, you need to build up more pages to discuss about causes of ageing and how your product slows down the process.

You can use PPC campaigns or adwords for your minisite promotion. You can update your minisite from time to time. A great thing about them is once minisites are built, you don’t need to spend a lot of time on their design once again. Only a few hours are required to develop a minisite and write the content. And then place links on your minisite to connect it to your main website or other sites in order to increase traffic and ensure a steady cash flow through it.

Minisites, while functioning individually, are unlikely to glance off much but if work collectively, they could earn you an overwhelming return. Minisites are easy to design as well as maintain. There is no need to respond to mails hitting your email account on a regular basis. You also don’t need to regularly update your minisite design. After you are done with their it design, there is no need to take further look at the site. That saves you time that can be spent for other purposes.

However, you need to check stats every now and then and even may have to add a page or more pages. You may also add a little tweak to your minisite to refresh its look, provided such change is likely to bring you good money.

Of course, you should go back every now and then and check stats and perhaps add a page or tweak the site a little, particularly if the site is making you good money (note : mini sites are also a great way to test the water of a niche you’re not familar with).

How to Optimize Your Minisite Design on Search Engines

A minisite refers to a simple and clutter-free website created to promote a particular product and convey sales message. A mini site is also referred to as a micro site and has a URL that is distinct from the main website. It may contain five-six pages though most of the time, is a single-page creation. 

The purpose behind any minisite design is to generate more leads and sales. Now traffic build-up for your minisite can be improved via content development, article marketing, PPC campaign and social media marketing. Unlike regular websites, minisites are not designed with aggressive SEO marketing components like keyword-rich content and so take time to get a good rank in the search engine result pages. However, they can be made compatible with search engine algorithms via addition of a few more pages and content. It is very important for a minisite to be easily visible on the search engine listings, attract more visitors and enhance rate of conversion. 

A minisite serves only a single purpose and that is to sell your product. Most of the time, the landing page contains the sales message so that it easily comes into view of the target visitors. Simple navigation is a must-have feature for any effective minisite design. Simplicity is a striking feature that encourages the prospects to visit your site and make a buy from it if they like your product and the sales message convince them. A one-page structure makes it difficult for a minisite to be favored by the search engines. In fact, a minisite – even if designed stunning and most professional – is the first one to go down the pecking order of major search engines.

The search engines love keyword-rich content but minisites are short on that. By including a few pages to your one-page minisite, you can make it attract search engine crawlers. It will help in optimization of your minisite. The required additional pages are as follows:

Homepage

All business related information must find a mention on your homepage. The page should also shed light on your product and the brand on the whole. Keywords must be used in title, subtitles and body of content. A homepage contains all the links to other pages of your minisite. An opt-in box should be placed in the right position for those visitors who are not interested to buy anything right now but could be asked to provide some basic information like email address so that they can be contacted in future. 

Article Pages

Articles found on these pages must have general ideas about the particular product promoted through use of optimized keywords. The search engines can recognize relevant synonyms and you can use them interchangeably. The ideal way to optimize your minisite design is to develop a separate page for every article based on a single keyword. That will give your minisite page great exposure, earning you more leads within a short time. However, the trick for better conversion lies in the links that direct to the sales page. 

Sitemap

A sitemap is a guideline for the search engines to locate specific page in your minisite. When you are creating sitemaps, make sure that your minisite home page, article page and other pages maintain right density of relevant keywords for more exposure in search engines.