# Microsite

URL: https://tnb-tech.com/en/glossary/microsite/

## What is a microsite?

A microsite is a small site of a few pages, separate from the main one, built for a single campaign, product or event. Its advantage is focus: one subject, one action, no menu to wander off into. Its cost is that it lives on its own address and adds nothing to the main domain, which makes it right for a campaign with an end date and wrong for permanent content.

**When it makes sense**

- A campaign with an end date: a competition, a seasonal offer, a game, where the site will be switched off afterwards.
- An event: a conference, a fair, an opening, with its programme, registration and practical details.
- A product with its own audience: one that the main brand’s visitors would not look for, or one with a very different tone.
- A partnership between several brands, which none of their main sites should host alone.It is the wrong choice for permanent content, such as a service, a product line or a set of guides. Those belong on the main site, where every page strengthens the others.

**Example**

A dairy runs a summer campaign with a prize draw: buyers enter a code from the pack. The draw needs its own rules, a code form, a list of winners and a different, playful design. A microsite at a campaign address handles it for eight weeks, takes 24,000 entries and is closed with a redirect to the brand’s site when the draw ends.

The same dairy had earlier put its recipes on a separate recipe site. After two years it had 140 recipes and almost no visits from search, because it was a young domain competing with established ones. Moved onto the main site as a section, with 301 redirects from the old addresses, the recipes doubled their visits in six months.

**Why it matters for a business**

A microsite gives focus: one subject, one action, no menu to wander into. It can be built and changed quickly without touching the main site, and it can look entirely different. Its cost is in search. A separate address starts with no history, no links and no trust, and what it earns stays with it rather than with the main domain.

So the deciding question is lifespan. For something that ends, a microsite is often right; for something that stays, a section of the main site almost always is. A microsite also needs the same care as any site: speed, measurement, a privacy policy and a plan for what happens to the address afterwards.

**What to ask**

- Does this content have an end date, or will it stay?
- Would it help or hurt the main site to have it there instead?
- Is the microsite measured in the same analytics as the main site?
- What happens to the address and its links when the campaign ends?We build a microsite for a campaign or a product with the same care as a large site: fast, measured, with a clear goal. More is in our website development.

- Services: [Website development](https://tnb-tech.com/en/services/website-development/)
- Glossary: https://tnb-tech.com/en/glossary/