A Landing Pages report can show you how engaged visitors are with your content. You can analyze individual pages or the Content Groups we just talked about.
Suppose you want to know: What pages cause visitors to leave?
Look for pages with high bounce rates, this usually indicates content that isn't appealing to visitors or is irrelevant to their needs
Try changing the headline of your article or finding better images
You may also want to analyze the page speed for pages with high bounce rates; visitors may be giving up on a very slow-loading page
Both Content Groups and Landing Page reports can help you find underperforming pages on your site and take action to fix them.
3. Get to know your users
Demographics and Interests data helps you understand the age and gender of your users, as well as their interests based on their online browsing and buying.
Suppose you want to know: How old are my visitors?
Try Demographics Report > Age
Check the bounce rate: if it’s high, consider changing the headline or the visuals to make your pages more relevant and engaging for your target audience
Suppose you want to know: What are my users interested in?
Try an Interests report
Then shape your content based on the user interests you see; if viewers of you tech blog are interested in photography, try publishing more articles on that theme
To get started with the Demographics and Interests reports, enable them in your Analytics account.
The key to making your site better is to jump into the data, have fun, and experiment. Find out what works and do more of it. Have any ideas to share about using these reports? Add them in the comments below!
Be targeted, be consistent, be frequent
Take time to figure out who is reading your content and what topics they find most interesting. Does your blog about dogs get 20 comments about Chihuahuas for every one comment about Great Danes? Maybe you should focus on the little guys!
Update your content as often as you can. With regular updates you’ll build trust and engagement with your users, and they’ll be more likely to share your content with their friends and family.
Create engaging videos
People crave video. In fact, the average mobile viewing session on YouTube is now around 40 minutes. You could boost the amount of time your visitors spend on your site by using video and photos.
Create your own videos; it gives your site personality and unique content. Try adding a separate video section, or integrate video within your articles. Use A/B testing to find the best spot for your video: for instance, see how a video performs in the middle of article versus at the end. Remember, if you use videos that aren't yours, make sure that you have the rights to distribute them.
Be mobile-friendly
The number of smartphone users is estimated to grow by 16% to two billion users in 2015. In all, web access from mobile phones will represent 69% of all traffic by 2017, according to emarketer.com. The average user now spends almost three hours per day on mobile devices.*
To win more visitors, optimize your site for all screens. Your site needs to be accessible anywhere and anytime, on smartphones and every other device. (Hungry to learn more? See more tips on going mobile.)
Go social
The way users find and share content has changed. Along with direct and search traffic, social sharing is key for your site visitor strategy. Remember, your article or video could be the perfect fit for someone’s micro-moment, so make sure you have the most important message in the first few moments.
Use social plugins and sharing buttons to help users share your content on the spot. Use large icons to highlight those sharing options. Try to A/B test where those buttons get the best engagement: at the top, at the bottom or embedded right in the article. For the best user experience, keep those buttons separated from your AdSense ads.
Look at what the numbers are telling you
If great content is job #1, great measurement is job #2. Google Analytics can bring you a deeper understanding of your audience and their demographics, time on site, which pages people leave fast, and which they visit most.
Use these insights to provide your users with the right content that works across devices. For instance, try the long-term revenue framework.
Have some top tips of your own? Share them with us in the comments below.
Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving. It's taught by innovative institutions such as IDEO and the Stanford Design School and is often used to design new products.
But it's not just for designers. Publishers like you can use human-centered design to understand what audiences want and create new content to match. Why not give it a try?
The steps go like this:
1. Empathize: Observe, engage, and immerse
To get started, look at your users’ behavior and think about why they behave that way.
Meet some of your users and watch what they do with your content.
Engage with them. Ask them why they read or watch your content. Try to uncover their needs.
Immerse yourself in their experience however you can. Try to discover the emotions that guide their behaviors. Which specific users do you want to create new content for?
Let's say we have a blog focused on the millennial generation and their interests. By meeting and talking with our audience, we learn that a small but growing group of young professional women find our blog really valuable. We decide to focus on this audience.
2. Define: Focus and paraphrase
What is the main user need? Based on what you've heard and learned, create a problem statement. It should look something like this:
"Young professional women need to know more about how to advance their careers, because they aspire to move into management roles."
This is a good problem statement because it:
Targets a clear cohort of users.
Addresses a specific need.
Is something you can take action on.
3. Ideate: Explore
Now it's time to explore as many possible ideas as you can think of. Here are some key ideas for brainstorming:
Be prolific. Go for a high quantity and wide variety of ideas.
Be positive. Use the mantra "Yes, and" to build ideas on top of each other.
Be patient. Don't interrupt yourself or critique ideas as you think of them. You can judge them later.
Use guiding questions. For instance, "How might we…"
Connect relatable role models with our young professional women readers?
Give them useful strategies for managing up?
Address the biases women may face in the workplace?
4. Prototype: Create
Now you're ready to start building. Choose your best idea and build as many prototype solutions as you can. Prototypes can be things like:
Post-it notes
Role playing
Storyboards
Objects
Use any prototype you like, as long as it's something you can show to test users to judge their reactions. For our blog, we might:
Create a video interview with female executives and transcribe it for the blog.
Go to a conference on women in leadership and post notes on conversations we have there.
Present data that shows how progressive companies have tried to address the problem and what can be implemented at smaller companies.
Hold a Google Hangout and invite readers to join in and talk with a guest speaker.
5. Test: Experiment, refine
Now you're ready to take things back to your target users again. Show them your prototypes and once again observe, empathize, and immerse yourself in their experience. Ask for feedback. Listen. Then use what you hear to refine the prototype. Refine and repeat as necessary.
You'll need patience for this creative problem-solving approach. But when you're done, your ideas will be stronger because they grow from the needs of your users. The more you get to know your audience, the better you can anticipate their needs and adjust your content strategy to engage them in the future.
We hope you find this new thinking useful whenever you design something new. Let us know what you think about the human-centered design in the comments below.
The choice is yours and all strategies have both pros and cons. When making the decision, you should consider the following:
Do I want to serve the same content to all platforms? If so, a responsive design should do the trick.
What’s more important; speed or flexibility? A separate mobile site or dynamic serving allows for better optimization.
Do I have the resources to maintain more than one site? Responsive design can help you save valuable time and resources.
What kind of technical capabilities do I have? Pick a strategy that best suits your skill set.
3. Follow best practices
We’ve finally made it to the fun part – building the site. No matter what solution you choose, every multi-screen developer should follow these general rules of thumb.
Focus on the main action that you want the user to take: While you had plenty of space on desktop, you’ll have to be resourceful on mobile.
Make your navigation easy to understand: Users want quick access to key actions, so make things easy to find.
Use existing design paradigms: Do you already have a brand identity on your desktop site? Reuse the same design elements when possible. Try adapting to the user’s device, for example using Material Design for Android: users like familiarity.
Make sure videos work: Design your look and feel and page animations using modern web technologies. Read more about Look and Feel for video in our Web Fundamentals guide.
Limit image-based text: Make use of web fonts when possible. Mobile means lower bandwidth.
Simplify payment processes: Auto-populate shipping addresses and contact details. Use existing payment solutions such as Google Wallet.
4. Avoid common mistakes
Learn from other developers by checking out some of the most common mistakes on mobile sites. This can save you time as you plan and launch your multi-screen strategy.
We hope these guidelines are useful when thinking about your multi-screen strategy. Let us know if you have any other tips that have worked well for you in the comments below.
