What is a microsite?
A microsite is a small, focused website dedicated to a single campaign, product launch, or audience segment. Unlike your main website, which serves many purposes, a microsite exists for one reason and one audience. It usually lives on a subdomain (campaign.brand.com) or a separate domain entirely, and it has a finite lifespan tied to its purpose.
Microsite vs landing page vs subdomain
- Microsite: Multiple pages, a contained user journey, distinct branding or tone, dedicated domain or subdomain.
- Landing page: Single page, single CTA, usually lives under the main site's domain.
- Subdomain: A technical architecture choice (blog.brand.com). A microsite often uses a subdomain, but not every subdomain is a microsite.
Rule of thumb: if the content fits on one page, you want a landing page. If it needs multiple pages with their own navigation, you want a microsite.
When to use a microsite
- Product launches that need their own narrative, like Apple's individual product microsites
- Time-bound campaigns like Spotify Wrapped, which lives at spotifywrapped.com each December
- Brand storytelling that conflicts with the main site's tone (Dove's Real Beauty microsite)
- Events — conferences, annual reports, award shows
- Audience segments that require their own design language (enterprise vs SMB, B2B vs consumer)
- Partnership campaigns with co-branded URLs
Famous microsite examples
- Spotify Wrapped (spotifywrapped.com): Annual personalized listening-year recap. Arguably the most successful recurring microsite in marketing.
- Dove Real Beauty (campaignforrealbeauty.com): Long-running brand-story microsite separate from Dove's product site.
- Nike+FuelBand: Had its own microsite for the launch, later folded into Nike.com.
- Google Year in Search: Google's annual retrospective, technically a sub-path but functions as a microsite.
- Airbnb Against All Odds: Campaign-specific storytelling microsite.
Subdomain vs subdirectory: SEO considerations
The subdomain question matters for SEO. Two options:
- Subdomain (campaign.brand.com): Google may treat this as a separate site. Pros: clear architectural separation. Cons: doesn't inherit the main domain's authority as strongly.
- Subdirectory (brand.com/campaign): Inherits the main site's authority. Pros: SEO strength. Cons: less clean separation.
For campaign microsites that need to rank fast, subdirectory usually wins. For long-running brand microsites with a different tone, subdomain can make sense.
A/B testing on microsites
Microsites are excellent A/B test containers because:
- Reduced visual noise — you can isolate the change you're testing
- Targeted audience — traffic is prequalified by the campaign
- Measurement clarity — no competing CTAs, no cross-contamination from other pages
- Autonomy — marketing can ship without going through the main-site review process
Common mistakes
- Building a microsite for content that would work on a landing page. Multiple pages of navigation add friction when a single focused page would convert better.
- Forgetting SEO hygiene. No canonical tags, duplicate content from the main site, broken hreflang.
- No sunset plan. Campaign ends but the microsite stays up, eventually 404s kill your SEO.
- Over-designing. A 40MB hero video that takes 8 seconds to load loses 50% of visitors before they see anything.
Related concepts
Landing page, landing page optimization, responsive website design, split URL testing, lead generation.
