28 Feb 6 Easy Steps To Building A Profitable Minisite
Minisites… they are the key that fits the keyhole for most online businesses. One of the reasons most people fail to produce profit online is that they put too many resources into the latest and greatest “thing”, whatever that may be, instead of putting their resources into what we know ALREADY WORKS!
I recently came across this great quote from Aussie author, entrepreuer and friend Mal Emery, “I would rather be a WEALTHY MODELLER, than a BROKE ORIGINAL THINKER.” Yes, that’s worth thiking about isn’t it?
I also came across this article for which despite my best efforts I have not been able to discover the origional author; but still wanted to publish it as it lists the 6 key principles for builing a profitable minisite. MOdeling. It’s al about modeling.
Want to make more money online? Then stop looking at the new flashy things, and start revisiting the tried and tested things. Your fortune may be there waiting for you to pick it up.
Enjoy!
A website generally has a whole lot of information to deliver – you’ve got to display company literature, product and services categories, resources, a blog, FAQs, etc. With a website, it’s a combination of all these touch points and your skill at cohesively putting them out there that intrigues and engages visitors. Minisites are a little different though and can make a real difference to your marketing strategy. Here’s why:
- While your website may have to be a little bland in order to appeal to a broad user base, a Minisite usually offers the opposite advantage – spice it up to appeal to a specific target market. This also makes Minisites ideal for when you are trying to drive traffic toward an actionable goal. Plus, with a Minisite, you can cut loose from anything that you don’t want to display, enabling you to deliver a highly targeted message that is virtually clutter-free.
- Since Minisites usually deliver high-impact messages aimed at specific audiences, they often leave very little room for ambiguity. You’ll find that this translates into optimum keyword densities, niche content and superlative relevance, allowing a Minisite to scale page ranks faster than its larger cousins. Think of it as a nimble, super-focused extension of your website.
- Minisites also offer you a more powerful roster of targeting opportunities. When used in conjunction with geo-targeting and a keyword-rich domain name, a Minisite can quickly jump to the top of a given SERP for local searches. That’s why using a Minisite to promote a single aspect, service or product of your company makes excellent sense.
Now that you know the pros of creating a Minisite for any given product, here’s HOW to actually set one up.
STEP #1 – The first step involves coming up with a suitable domain name. Check if the domain is up for grabs before constructing a marketing strategy around it.
Domain names can be used creatively to help your Minisite achieve much higher levels of visibility, depending on what you’re looking to achieve. For example, if your offering is confined to a specific area, you may want to incorporate the name of your city or town into your Minisite’s domain name. Why should you do this? Well, Google loves highly relevant, local searches, so if your Minisite is tightly focused, allowing the domain name add geographical search parameters is generally a good idea.
STEP #2 – Pick a decent hosting service.
Since you probably won’t have a massive amount on data on your Minisite, it is okay to eschew bandwidth and space in favour of reliability, price, uptime and triple-9 availability.
Figure out the hosting service’s domain name servers and set up the DNS for your domain name. Most web hosts provide detailed instructions on how to do this, so it should not be too much of a stretch. Once your DNS addresses have been established, let the domain registrar know by heading over to the registrar’s site and filling in the requisite forms.
Step #3 – Design stuff.
You know the drill. If you don’t, go ahead and hire a professional because believe me, you WILL need to know the drill when it comes to design. What makes many Minisites so very attractive is the fantastic design work that goes into so many of them. Again, it’s a good idea to weave your visual cues into your copy, especially when you’re attempting to drive traffic toward conversion goals.
Also, take a risk and go a little nuts with the design for optimum responses. I’ve found that people respond to slightly quirky stuff a lot better than staid professionalism.
STEP #4 – Write copy.
This words you place on this page will have to be powerful, engaging material. Think of the Minisite as a sales presentation – it needs to quickly capture viewer attention and drive them to action. For this reason it’s usually necessary to place all the information a customer needs to know in plain sight, while saving the flashy sales rhetoric for your closing argument. But whatever you do, ensure that the copy speaks to the target audience in tones that they understand and appreciate.
If you intend to be quirky with the copy, be warned – copy can be a lot easier to mess up than design and you don’t want to turn your target audience off. That said, true virality is built on the fun and the quirky so go ahead and try something new!
Step #5 – Settle on a layout and iron out all navigational issues.
If your Minisite has a series of pages that shuffle customers down the pipeline, make sure you include a link to the transaction page on everything in between. This will allow you to capitalize on those early responders who’ve already been dazzled into conversion by your outstanding design and copy.
But that doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to make it as complicated as possible. Remember, people are busy, so a simple interface that quickly gets to the point will usually deliver far better results than a lengthy presentation that beats around the bush and keeps users waiting.
STEP #6 – Use the web hosting tools provided to upload your website.
Always remember to test your site repeatedly for any kinks or glitches in functionality BEFORE you allow Google to cache it. With so many sites popping up every day, getting yours re-indexed can be a pain.
And that, in short, is how to create an effective Minisite that delivers when you need it to. Get more information on Building a Minisite with the Minisite Mastery Online Seminar.
– Paul Barrs
