Understanding Microsites - An Overview

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What is a Microsite?

A microsite is an auxiliary website designed to function as a supplement to your primary Capture website, usually displaying a subset of content such as individual collection(s) or offering a personalised gateway to a sub-group of assets for particular end users or contributors. 

To put it simply, it’s an independent extension of your main Capture site. It doesn’t share the same URL, and it may not even share the same branding.

 

Microsite Examples

Microsites are an incredibly useful and simple means of targeting specific audiences. Some examples of microsites include:

  • Differentiated Access: A means of providing an audience with unique or early access to content i.e. Media, PR.
  • Differentiated Permissions: A site for members or subscribers versus a site for non-members.
  • Regional Access: A simple and cost-effective means of delivering differentiated website design and content based on the region content is being accessed.
  • Standing out from your Main Brand: Running a campaign, an event or a promotion often requires a unique activation that can get lost on a primary website. A Microsite can offer a temporary as well as a permanent option for these specific types of activations.
  • Unique External Audiences: Providing specific audiences with a differentiated website experience and unique content for them, such as Sponsors.
  • Better SEO and site performance for niche content: For rights holders with larger volumes of content, some Collections may struggle to stand out because they are too niche. Promoting this content on a Microsite enables better SEO performance of the assets and keywords and, ultimately, better audience engagement.
  • Unique Internal Audiences: Ensuring teams have access to the right content for their needs and restricting access to outdated content or content not appropriate to their requirements i.e. Marketing teams having early access to new content for campaign planning versus, general access which may be restricted to approved media.
  • Subject-specific content: Microsites can provide a showcase for distinct content i.e. a specific subject matter be that an event, a location, an individual, a team etc.

 

The User Experience

A Microsite can offer the same functionality as you have access to on your main Capture-based Front-End. Features such as Lightboxes and Lightbox collaboration, the Shopping Cart, Submissions and Easy Uploader, Filters etc, are all accessible if you already have access to those capabilities on your main Front-end.

The Microsite can sit on any domain or subdomain that a client has the right to use.

Administration of the Microsite is undertaken from the same Capture Back Office you use for your main Capture Front-End.

Searching in any search bar on a Microsite will return search results relating to the collection or collections available on the Microsite.

A microsite is setup to Capture’s standard Front-End template specification using logo(s) and visuals specified by the client. As long as core settings within the Theme are not changed, the client can customise and design the Front-End template to their own specification.

What a user can do and access is driven by their user permissions setup within your Capture Back Office.

 

How Do I setup a Microsite?

A Microsite is a chargeable add-on to a Capture-Pro system. If you would like to deploy a Microsite, the first step would be to contact the Customer Success Team at support@capture.co.uk 

Once the Microsite feature has been enabled, the Capture delivery team will run through a simple set of requirements, and confirm the brand assets to be used as well as the destination URL. A Microsite would then be setup and deployed in the next available Sprint.

 

Microsite versus a separate Capture system......'Galaxy' and beyond

Microsites can offer incredible flexibility for how content is made available to a variety of different audiences and user groups, enabling clients to manage multiple sites from a single Back-Office. For scenarios that require each Front-End to operate and be administered autonomously a separate Capture system would be required.

Traditionally Visual Media Management systems operate on a 'stand-alone' basis. Capture systems can be connected through an aggregated search function across any number of Capture Systems, which we refer to as ‘Galaxy’, delivering content as one, browsable result to the end-user. Each ‘connected’ system operates independently through its own separate website and configurable Capture platform and leverages the benefit of the opted-in aggregated or ‘meta-search’. We’ll be publishing more details on ‘Capture Galaxy’ shortly, until then please contact the Customer Success Team for more details.

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