Montecatini Pro Mini-Site

Matthew Smith

Hey y’all!

Last Tuesday we (Louise Fili Ltd) launched Montecatini Pro. To help promote the font and better showcase all of its features, we built a mini-site. If your browser supports variable fonts, then you can play with the width and weight axes in the header.

You can check it out here:
https://www.louisefili.com/montecatini-pro



I don't really want this to just be a “look at us!” post, so I wanted to ask if you all think mini-sites are beneficial to sales? Also, do you read mini-sites (more specifically historical/technical sections)?

Montecatini's biggest selling factor is probably its ligatures, and as many of you know, MyFonts new family pages aren't very user-friendly. Well, Montecatini's ligatures are built as contextual alternates, and unfortunately MyFonts doesn't have those turned on by default at the moment (nor can you activate them). So we were extremely glad that we built the mini-site to help better showcase them and also give customers the opportunity to test them.

I don't have too many stats I can share, but I will say that the mini-site has attracted an ~800% increase in web traffic to our website, and it has sold well over the past couple of days. We made it to #3 on MyFonts, just behind ol' Monotype so I'll call that a success so far.

Design credits: Montecatini was designed by Louise Fili Ltd. Original design by Louise Fili and Nick Misani. Expanded design by Louise Fili and Andy Anzollitto. Additional assistance from Schriftlabor.

Matthew Smith

Full disclosure: I originally posted this in Type Releases but it seems those discussions don't get posted to the main page (which I understand), but this wasn't receiving any views and I'm interested to hear what you all think about mini-sites or if you have any comments/critique for ours.

Simon Cozens

I struggle to understand the difference between a “mini-site” and a web page.

Mark Simonson

I think it just means a website that consists of only one page—the only page under its domain.

Matthew Smith

Simon Cozens said:

I struggle to understand the difference between a “mini-site” and a web page.

Here's how I understand it: a mini-site is inherently a web page (or contains web pages), while a web page is not inherently a mini-site.

A standard web page often adheres to the styling and navigational hierarchy of the parent website, while a mini-site's purpose is intended to be more specific to something (whether that be a product, event, etc.) and likely deviates from the general structure and styling of the primary website.

As Mark noted, most mini-sites exist under their own domain, however, I don't think thats a sole determining factor. In our case, we chose to keep the Montecatini Pro site nested under louisefili.com, but it contains none of the styling or functionality from our primary site.

For us, it's the difference between these two pages:

https://www.louisefili.com/montecatini (a standard web page)
https://www.louisefili.com/montecatini-pro (the mini-site)

Catherine Bell

Beautiful site, love the color palette. Mouse move animation and "Try it yourself" feature all worked beautifully. You should try getting the site featured on muz.li and other creative networks.

Henning von Vogelsang

The term “mini-site” was invented by marketers to differentiate between a product being featured under the umbrella brand website, such as the Mac product series on Apple’s website – and a dedicated website for demonstration or attraction purposes. “Mini websites” are supposed to be standalone websites outside the stylistic and conceptual boundaries of the mother brand.

I never liked the term from an IA perspective. It seems to artificially try to separate something into different species, when in fact it’s one and the same species, just different breeds.

Henning von Vogelsang

I too think the website design is beautifully executed. I’m curious how you solve the changing header effect on mouse-over on mobile. 52% of all web traffic worldwide is now mobile.

Matthew Smith

I'm honestly not highly concerned with the pedantic accuracy of the term mini-site haha. That seems like a different topic of discussion.

Henning von Vogelsang said:

I too think the website design is beautifully executed. I’m curious how you solve the changing header effect on mouse-over on mobile. 52% of all web traffic worldwide is now mobile.

To answer your question, I didn't solve it! (Or I should say, I didn't try to.) Granted, you can still tap around on mobile to change the weight/width, but the general effect is definitely lost.

75-85% of our web traffic is on desktop, and we treated it as more of an easter egg than a selling feature considering not all browsers will support its functionality.