Creating a Condo Profile Microsite!
What is a microsite?
A microsite is a simple website that branches out from your main website, and is dedicated towards a specific service or product. It is used for focused marketing campaigns, and can range anywhere from a flash presentation to a single or multi-page site. A microsite’s purpose is to be simple and informative in order to avoid overcrowding content on a single website.
What are the benefits?
Essentially, microsites can provide specific information on a particular area or condo for example, which illuminates you as a specialist rather than someone who knows a bit of everything. It allows you to use distinct advertising strategies to attract to and reach different target markets. Some of the examples you can use microsites for are: distinctly separating renting vs. purchasing properties, condo profiles, area profiles, office space/commercial investments, power of sales, individual property pages, and much more.
Below is an example of a 4-page condominium profile of 10 Yonge Street and an outline of its features. Keep in mind it is for demonstration purposes only, and is not meant to resemble 10 Yonge Street accurately.
|
Page 1:
|
This is the first page of the microsite, with a brief introduction. The extent to which you decorate your microsite is up to you. In this case, it has a fresh banner which varies from the main website and uses a different colour scheme.
It has a simple introduction, nothing fancy, just to outline the contents of the website and the services offered. All you need to do to create a page like this is open ‘Website Editor’, click on ‘Pages’ > ‘New Custom Page’. Once it is created, go to ‘Add Content’ > ‘Text’ and when the Rich Text Box loads, write your introduction and add a picture as in the example if you wish by going to ‘Insert’ > ‘Insert Image’. |
|
Page 2:
|
Again, the purpose is to be brief but informative. This page contains floor plans with their brief outline as well as pricing ranges. To create a similar page, all you need to do is open ‘Website Editor’, create a new page, apply the preset of your microsite (this will be discussed in further detail at the end of this example), click on ‘Add Content’ > ‘Text’. When the Rich Text Box loads, you can add the heading, format the text, add a table, and go to ‘Insert’ > ‘Insert Image’ to insert the floor plan images, then write in a brief description. |
|
Page 3:
|
The third page displays the available units in that condominium, in this example there are only two. You can add an individual listing by opening ‘Website Editor’, creating a similar page as the one above, going to ‘Add Content’ > ‘Personal Listing Link’. Once that loads, it allows you to select which listing you want to display from a drop down menu. What I did above to spice it up is add a title advertising an open house as well as add a discription at the bottom of the listing. You can add as many ‘Personal Listing Links’ as you want. |
|
Page 4:
|
The last page outlines the building amenities as well as a description of the area.
An additional feature is to include photos of the surrounding areas, which is done again by just creating a text box and clicking on 'Insert' > 'Insert Image'.
|
|
Another great feature to supplement this type of page is an ‘Amenities Map’ which can be added by going to ‘Add Content’ > ‘Amenities Map’ which gives you the option of choosing which address to zoom to by entering the latitude and longitude, as well as the zoom level that you prefer. A great tool for helping you obtain that information is http://www.getlatlon.com/. As highlighted above, you can even select an image to specify the point on your map! |
|
Here are the steps to follow when creating a microsite. To begin, make sure to open ‘Website Editor’ first.
Step 1:
- Create a new category: click on ‘Category’ > ‘New Category’, name it, i.e. 10 Yonge Street, and make sure ‘Visible to Visitors’ is NOT checked off
- Create a new page: click on ‘Pages’ > ‘New Custom Page’, name it, and select the category you want it to display under
- You’ll notice when you’re on the newly created page, it is under the ‘Default Theme’ preset. The most important thing to remember is not to mess up the default theme as it controls your entire website! Create a new preset by typing a preset name in the field next to the 'Save As Preset' button near the top of the page
- If you are planning on associating a separate domain name with this microsite, call the preset '(Default Theme domain.com)'. Remember to include the brackets, and replace "domain.com" with your domain name. This will ensure that any listings you add on the site keep the same look as the rest of microsite, instead of reverting back to the global Default Theme.
- Select the newly created preset from the dropdown menu and click ‘Apply’ to the newly created page – now you are ready to make changes to it without affecting the default theme, so you can freely add a new banner and change the colour layout, and add content. Remember - every time you create a microsite page, ‘Apply’ the appropriate preset to it.
Step 2:
- Create your desired pages and add content to them. You can customize your microsite by incorporating a different banner than your original site, or just a stock photo for simplicity, and then create additional pages and add content to them as seen in the above example.
- An optional addition is to create a menu bar, because you cannot use the same one as your main website. You can do this by going to ‘Add Content’ > ‘Text’ and insert a table with, for example, 1 row and 4 columns as shown in the above example. You can right click and edit ‘Table Properties’ to change the background colour and create hyperlinks by selecting the text and clicking on ‘Insert’ > ‘Insert Hyperlink’.
The above steps outline the basic steps to create a microsite but because this is a self-managed website, all customization would be up to you or would come at an additional cost for custom work. Please note, at this time the 'Menu' and 'Main Title/Slogan' widgets may only be used on your main website and not on a microsite. In the microsite example above, the menu was created manually as described under 'Step 2'.
How have you used microsites to your advantage? Please post your comments below!
Authored By: Sevi, Client Relations