Typically the reason for the minisite is to create a segment of the main business website. This might be to laser-target a particular niche, or it might be to create a special offer that you wish to keep separate from the main site (eg discounts, added value, time limited offer etc)

Another reason is typically to improve your SEO results.
If the main site doesn’t rank well for a particular term (or group of terms), then a minisite may be a solution.
Because the domain name is a major factor in how well a site ranks, choosing an keyword-rich domain will often prove to be a shortcut to better rankings.

Guidelines for domains:

Obviously the main thing is to include the main words of the niche you’re targeting!
Keep it as short as you can (1-3 words is best).
Don’t use dashes, hyphens or underscores if you can avoid it (particularly if you’ll be advertising the site offline)
Only consider using dashes IF you’ll only advertise the site online (ie people will click a link, not have to remember or spell the domain) AND if the domain without dashes has been taken (& isn’t for sale)
Do some basic keyword research to determine the phrase(s) that most people use when searching in the niche & choose the domain accordingly (contact us if you’d like us to do that for you)

We recommend using DomainFace if you want to look for domains for sale, or domains about to expire.

The goal of the minisite …

will typically be to capture a visitor’s email address, or possibly even create a sale.
Either way it will usually be some sort of direct response offer, so the site should contain:

• some sort of form to capture the information & send that through to your email/CRM
• a static ‘thank you’ page. That is a second page that the user is directed to after they’ve successfully completed the form. This is then used to track how many users managed to complete the form – which gives you your conversion rate… a VERY important number to know
• Analytics tracking installed on all pages (we recommend Google Analytics NOT AWstats)
• As few form fields as possible. Preferably you’ll only require the user to give you an email address. Every field you ask for in addition to this (eg name, mobile, address) will reduce the conversion rate (in almost every case – although of course there are exceptions to this)

Additional pages to consider for your site:

Don’t just build a site with the landing page & a thank you page.
Users (& Google) won’t like it as much as something that offers plenty of value

At a minimum you should also include: a privacy policy page (essential if you’re collecting personal information), an about us page, a contact us page & possibly an FAQ page

You might also want to consider 5-10 pages of relevant, unique & valuable content that the user would find helpful in making their purchasing decision
Each page might contain 300-500 words & be about one particular aspect of the targeted niche.

How to build the site:

There are literally hundreds of ways to build sites these days & no shortage of bespoke systems to help you do so. The problem with those systems is that once you use them, you’re beholden to the owner of that system forever more – which can mean costly changes down the track.
Far better to use open-source software such as WordPress - as this is not only free (!), it’s also being continuously improved by a world-wide army of geeks!
WordPress (WP) is also very easy to use & is very well optimised for SEO without you having to change anything – it just works!
And because it’s open source, there are no shortage of helpful how-to videos on  the web explaining every aspect of how to use the platform.

Where to build the site:

You can of course use your usual web development team & pay accordingly
But increasingly it’s getting cheaper & easier to use web designers from around the world.
Sites like elance.com, odesk.com, rentacoder.com & guru.com make it easy to find, work with, then pay a freelance designer anywhere in the world
The huge benefit of this is cost – you might expect to pay ~$500 for a complete site, assuming that you provide the copy & images to be used
Stuck when it comes to finding images – head to iStockPhoto.com & choose from millions of shots for a few dollars each (the medium size is fine for website work)

That’s it.
Once the site is built, we can help you ‘split-test’ the site… for example testing 4 different headlines to see which works best.
Small changes to headlines (and other copy, the offer, the colour scheme & other elements) can have a massive impact on your conversion rate.
It pays to test!

Let me know how you go with your site & good luck!

From this we can tell that a decent, benefit-driven Ad highly relevant to that keyword & a decent Landing Page will probably cost about $3-4 per click at the top of the page.

And yet 2 of the top 5 results are for American sites (complete with American credit check jargon that most Aussies wouldn’t begin to understand) and another site is broken – see image.

How to avoid a broken AdWords campaign:

1. Check your Landing Page regularly – at least once a month – on all 3 major browsers (IE 6 or 7, Firefox & Safari). There are websites that will show you what your site looks like if you don’t own a Mac

2. Ensure that your list of countries (in your AdWords account) is limited only to those countries that you regualrly sell to. Once you know your account has a great ROI, then by all means extend your reach – but do so with a different campaign, a specific landing page, no jargon & ideally a domain name for that country. A .com.au domain for an Australian AdWords account will make a huge difference to your CTR (how much? it varies by industry, but we’ve seen accounts triple their CTR overnight with a .com.au & that’s without further testing)

3. Ensure that you can actually sell to the countries that are on your list! If your only payment option is PayPal, are residents of those countries even allowed to open a PayPal account?

4. Use Google Analytics to check your Bounce Rate regularly – at least monthly, if not weekly. A higher than normal (whatever normal is for your site) bounce rate indicates that visitors are not getting what they expected. GrokDotCom has an excellent post on this topic this week.

5. Common sense is sadly under-rated! As often as you can, sit down at a computer with someone that’s not a staff member & look over their shoulder as they navigate through your site. Try to stay silent & just watch! You’ll learn a lot. Do this often.

6. Install ClickTale & watch movies of your visitors trying to use your site – probably an eyeopening experience.

7. Hire an expert to look over your site & give you objective feedback.

Did I miss any? Feel free to add more below in the comments. Thanks, Mike

So two excellent resources today that I highly recommend – each will take you about 1-2 minutes to read & could make you thousands of $

GrokDotCom is always excellent. Here Jeff explains 5 keys to increasing conversion on your pages: scent, transparency, specificity, proof & readability:
Link down.

Likewise the ever-informative CopyBlogger. Roberta covers the first 7 reasons why many big businesses fail with their email campaigns:
http://www.copyblogger.com/how-crappy-landing-pages-kill-email-campaigns/

Have you tested a new Landing Page recently?