Microsite vs Landing Page: What's the Difference?

Small web experiences come in many sizes. What exactly are microsites and landing pages, and which one should you build to reach your goal?

Though the terms “microsite” and “landing page” are easy to mix up, there are clear features that separate the two. While they both serve a similar purpose — communicating specific information in a concise way — they differ in terms of their architecture, scope, and the actions that they lead visitors to take.

In this article, we lay the microsite vs landing page confusion to rest. Read on for definitions, nuances, inspirational examples, and tips on how to create exceptionally good versions of both without needing to write a line of code.

What is a Landing Page?

Landing pages are gateways into your brand’s website. The clue is in the name: they “land” people on your website and keep them close. As such, landing pages tend to stay within the overall visual design of a brand’s website, rather than offering something dramatically different or experimental.

Visitors may find themselves on landing pages through organic search results, clicking a paid ad, or clicking a link from a social media post or newsletter campaign. Once they’ve landed, it’s up to the page design and copy to steer them towards taking a very clear action, learning something specific, or completing a simple goal. Often only one call-to-action is present, due to the streamlined nature of a landing page which serves to help boost conversions for a specific goal.

One of the key microsite vs landing page differences is scope. Landing pages are often short and punchy, offering a streamlined user experience and a single message or call to action, whereas microsites are more expansive.

Ready to see some examples? Here are just a few ways that landing pages can be used.

Audio and Video Content Landing Pages

If you’ve created podcasts, videos, or other forms of content, a landing page provides a centralized space for people to access what you’ve made, as well as helps them to find your content through organic and paid search results.

The Future London Academy hosts design-related events, runs workshops, as well as produces webinars. They put out a landing page to promote their leadership-focused webinars and to act as a portal to these videos on YouTube. This landing page provides an easy way to access this video content and demonstrates their eclectic design sensibilities with a layout full of wildly clashing colors and 8-bit inspired visuals.

Product Landing Page

When you’re marketing a product, navigating the microsite vs landing page dilemma can be tough. As a general rule, microsites are a better option when you have multiple items or a campaign featuring a line of products. Landing pages offer a tighter focus, making them the right choice for promoting single products.

With a whimsical design filled with scroll-triggered animations, illustrations, and the author’s own words about her work, The Silly Bunny landing page gives a preview into its story and characters. Along with showing off the books’ artistry, it offers visitors the choice to purchase the e-book or pre-order a physical version, with two calls to action fixed in a sticky position on the top right of the screen. It’s eye-catching yet simple, with all of the content and visuals aimed at getting people interested in this book and buying a copy.

Year In Review

Landing pages give you the room to fully explore a topic or subject, making them ideal for branded year in review content. We rolled out our major accomplishments of 2022 with a Vev built landing page full of dynamic visuals like an interactive 3D globe animations with clickable hotspots, animations, and a bright and lively color palette.

What is a Microsite?

Microsites are another form of branded content that often lie at the heart of digital marketing campaign strategies. As standalone web pages — or clusters of pages — they offer space to try out different messaging, take creative risks, and provide a sense of focus that’s difficult to do on large-scale websites.

While they can be just as punchy as landing pages, generally speaking, microsites consist of multiple pages and deliver a broader range of information or calls to action. A clear example of this lies in page navigation. Whereas a landing page may be absent of navigational options (since it’s designed to steer you to once clear action), a microsite will often provide multiple options to help readers move between all the pages that are a part of it.

Another important differentiating factor is longevity. Landing pages tend to be more “evergreen” than microsites, designed for specific SEO or communication goals attached to a given domain, whereas microsites are often ephemeral — only lasting as long as a marketing campaign is designed to run. As such, microsites tend to live on domains that are completely separate from a brand’s main website. Again, the clue is in the name: a “micro” site that is off from your brand’s main site.

Let’s take a look at several different microsite examples to explore the creative ways they can be utilized.

Educational

Perfect as mini “content hubs” for your brand, microsites are an effective way to deliver in-depth information, raise awareness of a cause, and guide visitors to discover more about your products or services.

Loco and Noco are Vev’s sock puppet ambassadors of web design. We gave them their own microsite that we built using our platform, with multiple lesson sections of videos and helpful content that teaches you how to design and publish a website with Vev. It’s lighthearted yet informative, making it easy to understand how Vev works.

Event Promotion

If you have a conference, workshop, or another type of event, microsite are great tools for gathering together all of the information someone would want to know about it.

Awwwards is well regarded amongst web designers, with a showcase of stunning websites that’s continually updated with new work. They’re putting on a conference in Toronto, and this website covers the speakers, workshops, and schedule, as well as makes it easy to grab tickets.

Instead of trying to fit in all of this event information on Awwwards’ main website, they dedicate a microsite to this conference, giving them plenty of room to communicate all of its details.

Sidenote: check out our talk at Awwwards’ 2022 conference on fixing web creation, if you haven’t already!

Gamification

Often, there isn’t room or the right context to include gamified features on a primary website. Landing pages give you the space to offer interactive and immersive experiences that not only provide entertainment but can help build awareness about what you do.

With a mission to close the gender gap in tech, Girls Who Code offers clubs, summer courses, and online resources to inspire and educate those who may be female or gender non-conforming in pursuing computer science. Their landing page Girls Who Code Girls further supports their message of empowerment.

Girls Who Code Girls is an experience rich in 3D visuals and sound that leads visitors through the process of creating a character. Each step requires finding a blank space in a block of code and then picking out a feature from a drop-down of choices. This offers a great introduction to how concepts like Python classes, CSS styles, and JavaScript declarations work, giving visitors immediate feedback after each choice they make. This teaches some basic concepts about coding in a way that’s inspiring and fun, falling right in line with Girls Who Code’s aim of getting people excited about programming.

Brand Affinity

Big brands use microsites to focus on a product or intellectual property and build an experience around them. This is a great tactic for engaging fans and followers with your brand on a deeper level, offering them exclusive ‘extras’ that bolster their connection with your brand.

Nintendo spins out several microsites from its main page, focusing on some of its most popular characters with designs that capture the personality of the games they’re known from. Along with microsites dedicated to Zelda, Super Mario, and Kirby, you’ll find this microsite for Splatoon3. With images and screen grabs from the game, splattering paint, and playful colors this design perfectly captures the spirit of Splatoon.

Microsite vs Landing Page Key Differences

If you’re still in doubt, we’ve broken down the main microsite vs landing page differences into a simple table.

Microsite vs Landing Page Key Differences

If you’re still in doubt, we’ve broken down the main microsite vs landing page differences into a simple table.

Build microsites and landing pages with Vev

Whether you want to build a microsite, landing page, or a more expansive website, Vev makes it easy to bring your wildest ideas to life. With advanced no-code animations, interactive design components, and an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, creative teams can quickly scale unique brand experiences without involving developers. Once your design is ready, publish it anywhere on the web.