Using Microsites To Get Results

A microsite is a website that is tightly focused on a specific product or topic. Some search engine optimizers attempt to use interlinked microsites to boost their page rank in Google, or to try to dominate the search results for certain search phrases. Those types of efforts are generally a waste of time. However, there are legitimate uses for microsites. Microsites can be valuable for sales or support service staff who spend time on the phone with customers. Instead of having the customer go to a page within the company’s main website, which might have a URL such as:

www.companyname.com/productcategory/product/support.html

the customer can go to a microsite with a URL that is much easier to describe on the phone, such as:

www.product.com

The microsite focuses on one product/service. Its purpose is to help your customer quickly learn more about that product/service; solve a problem; or provide answers to question. It does this by making the information simple and easy to find, access and understand.

Here's a microsite idea you can use to supplement a phone conversation. Once the customer is at the microsite they sign-in with a "name" that is unique to the indicidual sales/support person. ASP/PHP pages log where the customer's activities allowing the sales/support person to see where the customer goes in real time, as they are discussing the customer’s questions on the phone.

Here’s another interesting possibility. One option is that the pages on the microsite could be ordinary pages with normal links. The sales/support person tells the customer on the phone which links to click on to move them to the next step. The interesting possibility is to set up the pages the customer sees so they have a single NEXT button. Which page that NEXT button goes to is determined by selections the sales/service person makes on their computer. Thus the information that is presented is controlled by the sales/service person in response to what is happening in the phone conversation.

This approach eliminates the possibility of the customer clicking on the wrong link, and getting lost. It also means the customer sees only the information the sales/service person wants them to see. So, for example, if a salesman wants to offer a special package deal to one customer, but not make that special deal generally available to all customers, they can do that.