Microsites: How to Create Them With Drupal

Microsites have emerged as an integral part of Drupal development services. Organizations worldwide leverage the power of microsites for multitudinous purposes. For the uninitiated, microsites are small-scale websites specifically dedicated to promoting a product, campaign, or event. 

You can use them to create sections on your business website that look different from your main theme and attract the attention of visitors. These sites are highly centered on the product, service, or event they intend to promote and are free from any other types of content such as about us, and our team. 

Here, we’ll explore the world of microsites and discuss the most effective way to execute them. 

A Brief Introduction to Microsites and Their Characteristics

In simple terms, a microsite is a subsection of a website with a different look and feel. Its primary purpose is to promote a particular product, event, personality, or campaign. The following are some characteristics possessed by microsites. 

1.    Microsites are purely promotional and exhibit an unwavering focus on the products, personalities, and events they aspire to promote. Hence, they do not contain any other content such as the about us page.

2.    They usually contain no more than 2 to 4 pages.

3.    They have their own defined mission to accomplish which wouldn’t be affected by the inexistence of the parent website.

4.    Microsites possess their own look and feel but also exhibit a clear association with the parent site. 

5.    Microsites are often built for supporting time-limited digital marketing campaigns. 

The Major Benefits of Microsites

Microsites are great for several purposes such as covering a particular industry topic without directly attaching your brand to it and for targeting a specific audience group. By adding email subscription sign-up forms to your microsite, you can also effortlessly build a focused list of potential leads. 

Besides, you can also use microsites to test an idea before officially attaching your brand to it. In case you get an overwhelming response from your target audience, you can move the content to your parent business website. 

1.  Incredible targeted promotions

As discussed above, microsites are highly focused on their intended purpose. This implies they can act as a pedestal for interacting with a specific audience. You can use tailored messages on your microsite and stimulate the visitors to respond to the call to action. 

2. Better SEO ranking for your main keywords

As microsites are centered around some specific topics and objectives, they act as effective gateways for generating SEO-optimized content that ranks higher on search engines. You can create all your content focusing on your main keywords and make it effortless for your target audience to find you. 

3. Effective for promoting focused experiences

As mentioned above, microsites possess only 2 to 4 pages, and that too contain only a specific type of content. This promotes a focused and distraction-free experience for visitors, making them more likely to respond to the call to action. 

As light cannot exist without dark, everything advantageous also has some drawbacks associated with it and microsites are no exception. Now, let’s examine the drawbacks of microsites. 

Building Microsites with Drupal Services

With Drupal development services, it is possible to build a cutting-edge microsite. This section endeavors to introduce you to various ways of building microsites with Drupal. 

1. Adding classes and libraries to your existing Drupal theme based on context

If you aspire to stick to your basic Drupal theme and want the look and feel of your microsite to possess the same structure as the main theme, this one is perfect for you. You can simply add libraries or contextual classes and accomplish your goal of building a microsite. 

In case you have your own Drupal development team, you can go for implementing this method in-house. However, if you don’t, you can hire a Drupal development company to handle things for you. They might also suggest some other ways of building microsites with Drupal depending on your individual requirements. 

Under such circumstances, it is crucial to consider their solutions as heeding expert advice is always the best choice. 

2. Letting fields on the content determine the look and feel of your microsite

It is interesting to note that it is possible for content types to have fields that determine their overall look and feel. You can change colors, upload a logo, and utilize unique menus, layouts, and fonts to separate your microsite from your parent business website. 

3. Utilizing Drupal standard multisite approach

The classic Drupal multisite approach allows you to build multiple sites that share the same code. However, each of them possesses its own database, content, configuration, and settings. Besides, every website can also have its own individual modules/ themes in its subdirectory existing in the same codebase. 

Some of the advantages of this approach include less hosting cost and the extent of customization that is possible for every site.

4. Using the domain module and other extensions

The domain module empowers you to create subdomains/subsites with your site’s base URL as the suffix such as mymicrosite.example.com. You can also use any specific suffix for your base URL resulting in a new domain such as example.com/mymicrosite. 

Once you do so, all the paths under /my microsite/* will automatically be related to your new subsite. Amazing, isn’t it? While using the domain module, you’ll have only one codebase which means that all the functions will get managed on a single site. 

However, why you might find this method daunting is that it involves high complexities related to the administration of subsites. 

5. Leveraging the power of organic groups

You can also leverage the power of the suite of organic group modules for building microsites through Drupal services. With them, you can create a group within your business website without any hassle. The best part is that the group can have its own admins, user, content, menus, and everything imaginable. However, this way of building microsites poses a problem. It is that every microsite will be bound to sit internally within your main site. Hence, this method doesn’t enable you to support external sites on their own domains. In case you want this to happen, it is better to opt for other methods of generating microsites with Drupal development services. 

Let’s Wrap Up

The bottom line is that there are multitudinous benefits and drawbacks to building microsites. Hence, it is advisable to weigh the pros against the cons for your business before building a microsite. Further, if you decide to build one after making careful considerations, there are several ways to accomplish your goal with Drupal such as the ones discussed above. 

In case you require the services of an eminent Drupal development company to create one or more cutting-edge microsites for you, LN Webworks is unarguably a wise choice. Our incredible and experienced team of Drupal developers has a history of creating phenomenal microsites for our clients. So, contact us today and we promise you won’t suffer even a twinge of regret at your decision.