Over time, Estadão has built Google+ into its content strategy as a result of the platform’s unique ability to stimulate conversation and discussion. Cláudia believes that Estadão’s audience is interested in a network that’s not just social, but also enables knowledge exchange. With this in mind, the team publishes content specifically relevant to Google+ followers, rather than replicating the same content across all of the social media outlets that Estadão uses. They’ve found that the network responds particularly well to serious themes, so posts cover topics like economics, politics and current affairs, often with an informal tone.
But it’s not only the exchange of ideas through the written word that Google+ facilitates for the newspaper. Estadão takes advantage of the visual strengths of the platform by posting full images, captivating video content and stimulating face-to-face discussion through frequent Hangouts, the free, high-quality video chat feature unique to Google+. Plenty of creative channel-specific initiatives are underway: a daily video of economic analysis, a nightly podcast summarizing the main news of the day and a weekly trailer previewing new cinema releases.
Estadão uses Google Analytics to understand visitor behavior, and it’s clear that Google+ is having a positive effect on traffic to the portal. Over a five-month period, Analytics showed that visitors to the Estadão site from the Google+ page increased 540%. At the same time, this traffic generated an uplift in page views per visit of 18%. Currently, the Estadão Google+ page has over 500,000 followers.
Want to replicate the brand’s success? Read all about it in the full case study, and feel free to share your experiences with us on our AdSense +page.
Italian site Ultimoprezzo.com provides a unique service to online consumers. It supplies information on stores and their opening hours, as well as their best prices for smartphones, TVs, tablets, laptops and other consumer electronics products.
As a supplier of free services, Ultimoprezzo needs to be savvy about its strategy for generating revenue. AdSense provides a straightforward solution.
“The Google AdSense program is the ideal way for us to monetize our publishing efforts,” explains founder and CEO Alberto Giacobone. He says Google AdSense not only provides Ultimoprezzo’s users with relevant and interesting advertising information, but also provides its advertisers cost-effective ad placements since Ultimoprezzo doesn’t need to maintain a sales network.
Globally, smartphone usage is on the rise. In Italy alone, 69% of smartphone owners never leave the house without carrying their device and 82% use their smartphone to perform research on a product or service. “Certainly, the numbers speak for themselves,” Alberto affirms. “In Italy and abroad, we are increasingly in a ‘post- PC’ era where smartphones and tablets accompany us at all times and everywhere, often even while we are doing other things.”
Very early on in Ultimoprezzo’s development, Alberto’s team perceived an opportunity in the mobile space. An internal team developed Ultimoprezzo’s mobile-optimized website, while a special agency developed applications for iOS and Android.
So has the company seen an uplift in mobile traffic? “The trend is clear,” says Alberto. “Mobile traffic is growing and is now already more than 15% of our total traffic. And this is not only down to the growing popularity of smartphones which cost less than $100; what we notice is that the users are getting better at exploiting the technological tool at their disposal more and more frequently.” With Ultimoprezzo’s non-mobile traffic volumes booming as well, by the end of 2012 Alberto estimates mobile will account for one-third of the company’s total traffic.
AdSense provides a way for Ultimoprezzo to monetize its content across devices. As new digital platforms emerge, AdSense makes new revenue streams available. “The AdSense program has allowed us to invest in the growth – both in terms of quantity and quality – of the services to our visitors, so we can keep them free always. ”
This information is current as of October 23rd, 2012.
Posted by Cristina Miscimarra - Inside AdSense Team
We hope you enjoy these changes -- stay tuned for more updates. For additional information visit our Help Center and feel free to leave comments and feedback on our AdSense +page.
Posted by Daniel White - Software Engineer, AdSense Reporting
Google Analytics is key to helping Christine understand how each social media channel contributes to the blog’s traffic. Designed to make analysis easy, Social Sources reports in Analytics automatically segment referral traffic from hundreds of social networks. By using these reports, Christine can see that Google+ is among the top 10 social referrers to Temptalia, along with other Google properties including YouTube and Blogger.
But to get further insights into the audience, Christine looks beyond the numbers and goes straight to the users themselves. “We try to listen in what our readers are asking for, what they are looking at, what they are most excited about,” she explains. This user-focused approach continues to drive Temptalia’s success. Christine’s advice to those getting started with Google+ pages is to use the channel as a valuable research tool in understanding a site’s readership.
While Temptalia may be a small operation, its impact is significant – already Temptalia has over 600,000 followers on Google+. To read more about how Christine, a lifelong beauty enthusiast, is using Google+ to maintain, build and serve her blog’s audience, read the full case study.
The Times team prepared for a smooth Hangout by securing guest participants for their live broadcast a week in advance. When the date of the decision arrived, the Times added a graphic placeholder to the NYTimes Opinion page and published a post to their +page to publicize the upcoming Hangout. Once the Hangout started, they embedded the video directly into the Opinion page and also added a homepage promotion to their site to drive awareness. After the Hangout was completed, the Times team quickly edited the video footage on YouTube and uploaded it to the front page of NYTimes.com for additional visibility.
For more information, read the full case study. If you’re ready to start broadcasting, be sure to review our tips and then get started with your own Hangout on Air. If you have any advice of your own to share about Hangouts, feel free to post them to our AdSense +page!
Example:
If you have a deal site where users can search for deals, you can first prompt them to sign up to be notified via email when new offers that match their interests are added to the site. You can also showcase how many people recommend a deal so users see which deals are popular.
We hope you enjoyed this three part series on user experience and we welcome your comments below!
Thinking about implementing some of these changes? We’d love to hear about it! Let us know what you changed in the comments section below.
Don’t forget to check out the User Experience Google+ Event Page on October 9th at 10:30am PST/1:30pm EST to join a Hangout On Air and see a real AdSense publisher put these principles in action!
Posted by David Richards - Google AdSense Resources:Get a Google+ Page - http://www.google.com/+/business/ Allow users to subscribe to your updates via Google+.
4. Tailor your experience to your users’ situation
Your site needs to provide a great experience to users whenever and wherever they need it. It’s important to put some thought into how your users use your site differently in different situations. Be sure to consider their time constraints and whether they are on a mobile device or a computer.
Tips:
Use these tips to help you think about the use cases your users might experience:
Situation: What situation is the user in that caused them to seek out information on your site?
Limit features: The mobile version of your site should only include the core features of your site that will help your users find the information they’re looking for. Save the other advanced features for your desktop site where your users have a little bit more time.
Speed: Users only have a couple of seconds so make sure your site loads lightning fast. Google’s Page Speed tool can help you optimize your load time.
Forgiveness: Users make mistakes, especially on mobile. Let them easily undo and return to where they were, without having to use the back button.
Example:
Suppose you’re a restaurant review site. How does a mobile user’s behavior differ from that of a desktop user? First off, mobile users are probably on the move; they could even be walking down the street as they browse your site. They won’t have time to navigate through several pages of restaurants like they do on the desktop site. They expect your site to use the phone’s GPS to locate them and show them popular restaurants nearby based on their search. Your site can even optimize the review experience for mobile by showing the most popular short reviews since users don’t have time to read long reviews.
Remember, it’s all about thinking about the situation that the user is in when they reach your site and tailoring the user experience to match.
Check in tomorrow and we’ll talk about generating return visits to your site and creating customer loyalty through a great UX.
Posted by David Richards - Google AdSense
Resources: Google Analytics Events - http://www.google.com/analytics/ Measure the impact of design changes and monitoring the continued usage of your site will keep you updated on how your users are interacting with your site, and how their usage can shift, change or evolve over time. Google Analytics Events will help you measure these changes by measuring clicks on pre-defined elements of the page. Site Speed Tool - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/ Google has provided some great tools to helping improve your site speed. How to GoMo - http://www.howtogomo.com/ Google has created a quick tool to see how your website looks on a mobile phone. It also provides some great resources to help build your mobile site. DUDA mobile - http://gomo.dudamobile.com/ Duda Mobile is a partner with Google GoMo and allows you to create your mobile site in minutes.
Example:
You’re a tech news site and after considering each of the questions above, you determine that:
Most of your users come from search engines and land on the article page
Your user is looking for the content of the article they searched for
You show them a full page article on the landing page
Your goal is to keep the user engaged, so that they stay longer and see more content
The answer to here is the real challenge. You need to prove to the user that there’s other valuable content on your site and encourage them to read more. This can be accomplished by including some related or popular articles at the bottom of each article.
2. Employ a clear structure to guide users
No matter what page a user lands on, you only have a few seconds on that first screen with the space above the fold to get their attention and show them what you’re all about. Employing a simple hierarchy will give your page a clear structure that will guide users and highlight what you want them to see.
Another thing to keep in mind is the information architecture of your site. Users are able to recognize familiar pages from unfamiliar based on the consistent way you organize and display information on your site. If your website’s structure is not logical or what they expect, users will be lost and not sure where to go next. This adds to overall frustration and can lead to users leaving your site. Tips:
Use these simple design tips to create a structure for your page:
Contrast: Using color, saturation, or opacity to juxtapose elements on the page.
Size: Size is one of the easiest design levers to guide your users. Don’t be afraid to use BIG and BOLD elements to draw users’ attention to the most important information on the page.
Alignment: Elements that share a common axis appear related.
Whitespace: Drawing attention to specific elements by leaving empty space around them. It also makes your design more appealing to the eye.
Grid: Using a simple grid to layout elements on your page will create a sense of order and structure.
Example:
Newspaper sites usually do a great job creating structure through hierarchy. The breaking story or most important piece of news dominates the screen. This ensures it’s the first thing you see. Major headlines from other sections are also big and bold so a user that’s browsing can quickly and easily pick them out. The size and contrast of photos and headlines helps to guide users through the page.
Thanks for reading and check back tomorrow for our second installment of Publisher Insights!
Posted by: David Richards - Google AdSense
Resources: Google Analytics: Google’s free tool to help you measure your traffic and how users are currently using your site. Additionally, it can help you test how changes to your site affect performance. Webmaster Guidelines: Creating a clear hierarchy and sitemap will help Google crawlers find and rank content on your site.
