Overcoming microsite challenges – new report
Many companies are struggling to find the right software platform to build effective microsites and landing pages, according to new research by Digital Doughnut sister company London Research.
Our new report – Achieving Microsite Excellence – finds that brands are increasingly seeking out solutions that give them the ecommerce and advertising-related monetisation capabilities they need, and that allow them to customise templates in the way they require.
According to the research, produced in partnership with ContentHUB, more than half of companies surveyed who use a different CMS for microsites reveal it is because their normal platform needs too much technical support (53%).
Exactly half (50%) say their main CMS does not offer customisable templates, while a third of companies (32%) say it would be too expensive to use their existing CMS for microsites.
The research is based on a series of interviews and an online survey of more than 250 companies carried out in April and May this year. The report explores how microsites are used by many companies for a variety of reasons, including the need to focus on a particular message or campaign, while also affording greater flexibility and the ability to move quickly.
Microsites allow brands to move away from the confines of their everyday site, empowering creatives to experiment with new templates and designs. But despite the advantages of microsites, brands can face challenges around a confused customer experience, dilution of brand and SEO.
As well as problems with customisation, many brands also struggle with effective monetisation of their content. Just a quarter of brands surveyed feel their CMS scores highly when it comes to integrating with ecommerce.
As the chart below shows, many companies are clearly feeling let down by their usual CMS and this becomes clear when what they regard as critical requirements are compared with what CMS vendors are doing well. Across nearly all aspects of core CMS functionality - from scaling campaigns to optimisation for social - the attributes which companies pick out as ‘critical’ are not considered to be correspondingly ‘good’.
Proportion of companies describing capabilities as ‘critical’ versus ‘good’
Source: London Research and ContentHUB
Other findings in the report include:
- More than half of companies say microsites help to improve customer experience (57%) and allow greater flexibility and chance for experimentation (60%).
- The main concerns with microsites, for around a third of respondents, is that they may dilute the brand (33%), confuse site visitors (32%) or cause search engine optimisation issues (31%).
- More than half of companies surveyed who use a different CMS for microsites reveal it is because their normal platform needs too much technical support (53%).
- Exactly half (50%) say their main CMS does not offer customisable templates, while a third of companies (32%) say it would be too expensive to use their existing CMS for microsites.
Download the Achieving Microsite Excellence report now to learn more.