Hoping to cash in on a new product launch? You might want to do more than simply feature the product on your home page. Mike Faith, president/CEO of business-to-business merchant Headsets.com, says his company has benefited by using microsites to sell new products.
Case in point: Sales of the company’s new Office Runner wireless headset on its OfficeRunner.com microsite are converting at a 40% higher rate than on the Office Runners landing page at Headsets.com.
Why that high? Faith says the microsite, which cost just a few hundred dollars and a day’s labor to launch, allows prospects to focus on one product, so the prospect doesn’t surf the site for alternative items.
With a microsite, the landing page is always the home page, so the prospect can simply view it and buy, or browse several pages deep for more detail, with no distractions, faith says. Shoppers are then not distracted by other products or services that are on the main site.
“I found that if you take away the potential confusion of lots of choices and just offer your best product on a microsite, it usually provides a leap,” Faith says. “When we direct our ads to a (Headsets.com) landing page, the prospective customers immediately notice that they can browse other (non product-specific) pages at the same site.”
Faith says he has tried product-specific microsites in the past for limited-time offers for a few months at a time, and has seen conversion rates of 20% to 40% higher than on the Headsets.com landing page. But the plan is to keep OfficeRunners.com up for an indefinite period of time, since it’s not a limited-time offer as the other microsite products were.
And Faith says he has learned some lessons along the way. The biggest is that a microsite must always include the three C’s: It must have credibility, it must give the buyer confidence and it must be creative. Without those, the prospect won’t become a customer.
“Simple things, like still including contact information, having the ‘About Us’ section and including the returns policy, are crucial to ensure buyers feel comfortable with their purchase,” Faith says.
The OfficeRunner.com site had a soft launch in the spring, but heavy promotion of the product and page via PPC and display ads began in mid-July, Faith says. The company is also promoting the product in the Headsets.com print catalog.