What Happens When You Build a Microsite and They Don’t Come?

We’re all familiar with the motto “If you build it, they will come.” While that line may have worked for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, such advice, especially in business, can prove to be none other than disastrous. Let’s start from the beginning — a microsite is an auxiliary website with independent links and address that is accessed mainly from a larger site. In this case, you may be running a dedicated B2B website for your clients. While the site is created for a specific group of people, and may be accessed only with password and login, all other rules apply.

When it comes to a microsite, you must treat the website just like any other; it must follow the same analytic considerations, and best practices of your regular e-commerce website. And, hopefully this comes as no surprise, rarely is any initial vision of a website market-ready and poised for success.  If you build it and they DON’T come, here’s what to do:

Look at the Design and Functionality of the Microsite

Almost every company functioning in today’s market has a website. Unfortunately, a large number of these websites are poorly designed. In today’s highly visual market, good website design is an absolute must. The way your site looks tells users about your business and more importantly, if you take pride in your products and customers. Remember, you are the image you portray.  

Of the utmost importance is functionality of your microsite. The design and placement of elements on the site will take hours, if not weeks, but whether they work and are intuitive enough for users will be decided in an instant. That first uniform purchase from a new user will determine if and how he or she continues to interact with your site in the future.

Test Run the Login and Checkout Process

If your site seems to pass the design test, perhaps the culprit is the login and/or checkout process. In order to make sure these functions are running as they should, we suggest you do a test run not only on your computer, but on multiples, using more than one browser.

Some websites, for example, are optimized for Chrome. While that’s great for Chrome users, you’ll want to make sure those using Mozilla, Safari, or a different browser can still use your site without issue.  

Examine Organization and Display of Uniform Products

Sometimes the problem is none other than how you display your products. If a user can’t find what they need, or if the layout of the products are not intuitively displayed, they may get frustrated and leave.

Ask yourself — “who am I building this microsite for?” These users are law enforcement, medical professionals, city officials, etc. Consider that when you strategically display the items they’ll need to purchase — keep all the products a firefighter, police officer, etc., might need to order together.

Analyze Your Traffic

One way to determine if your microsite is (or isn’t) successfully operating, is to take a look at the data. Examining things like time spent on a specific page, or bounce rate will give you valuable insight into how the user interacts with your site. It’ll also allow you to look for patterns and scrutinize why the bounce rate might be high, or why certain pages perform better than others.

Additionally, sometimes a company will dedicate a single person to place the bulk of the orders for their employees. If this is the case, check in with them to see how their experience on the site has been thus far, and get feedback for moving forward.

If you a build a microsite and no one comes to do business via that channel, the time, money, and effort put into creating the site was pointless. Instead of shrugging your shoulders forgetting it ever happened— take action! Turn that site floating in the interwebs into a successful platform for you and your clients.

At Sellers Commerce we’re here to help. Using our Uniform Program Management we’ll help you build responsive microsites for your clients that get results. For more information, contact us today!