It is no secret that mobile internet usage has increased over the years. Everything is easily accessible through our phones. We have witnessed how stories on every social media platform gather a lot of views and traffic, and we enjoy putting content on our stories, it’s easy and fun. It would be cool to have something similar on WordPress as well, right?
Thanks to Google and their new plugin, Google Web Stories, we can dive into the story field like experts.
What are Google Web Stories?
The time has come for you to bring your website to a new visual level with web stories. AMP decided to spoil us with this amazing tool, which will improve your customer’s experience by a mile. Now your mobile users will have the smooth experience they always wanted.
Web stories are tappable pages that will give your visitors a great and fluid experience on your page. They are interactive visuals that come in the size of a mobile screen. It is a great way of having content that is easy to use while doing everyday tasks, like having dinner or riding a bus.
It is a real game-changer. Most visitors on your site use mobile devices, and you need to adapt to that and provide the greatest experience you can.
It is also known that users are much more found of visual information than written words, and that is why Google Web Stories come in handy.
No matter what your site is about, you always need to cater to your customers, and this little helper is the future of mobile-friendliness.
Do’s and Don’ts
With every tool, there are a few tricks that can help you rock the field, but on the other side of the coin, there are things that can just as well backfire at you.
We already covered that people don’t like a lot of text to read, so bear that in mind. Pictures are worth a hundred words, and you need to focus on that. If you are putting text, be careful that it is not too small to read or too big that it covers important parts of the picture.
As for videos, make sure that they are vertical and not longer than 15 seconds. It is also important to put captions for the video that you want to use, so that viewers who are not able to hear due to the place they are at, can read the subtitles instead.
How to Use Google Web Stories
Now that we covered the part of what are Google Web Stories, it is time to show you guys how to use it. Just like any other plugin, you need to install it on your WordPress site.
After that, you will have a tab called “Stories” on your dashboard menu.
It will open the stories menu, which you can see in the picture below.
To create a new story, you need to click on the blue button to create a new story, which will lead you to the editing board. The interface of this amazing plugin is very simple, and you will master it in no time.
As you can see, I already circled some parts in the left up corner. The first yellow one is for pictures and videos. It is for uploading pictures/videos that you will need for your design. The second one, blue is for the text that you will write, and the last one is to add different shapes, that will give your design a little bit of edge.
Adding a picture is pretty simple. Click on the upload button on the left menu, choose a photo from your computer, and that’s it. Now it’s time to put it on the canvas, and you can do that by just clicking on the picture, and you can position it wherever your heart desires.
It is also highly advised that if you want to use a video, it needs to be a maximum of 15 seconds long, and it’s crucial to provide subtitles.
If you are going to create something where the picture is not in full screen, you can change the background color by just clicking on the background, and a menu on the right side will open where you can pick a color you want. You can play with a pick of solid colors or gradients, whatever you think will improve your design.
Now to add text, you need to click on the left side of the menu on the capital T letter, and a menu will open with three options to choose from.
After you inserted one option, you can easily play around with the position, size, color, and opacity on the menu on the right side. It is always a good move to experiment a little bit and see what will suit the best for your design.
But, there is something that is a real game-changer for the text function. Remember that we say its interactive?
You can link up a text, which means that you can put a hyperlink on a text, and when visitors click on it, they will have an option to open the link that you provided.
You need to scroll down on the right menu, and you will see an option called a link.
When you put the link that you want to link to your text, another option will open below where you can put a short description, and an optional brand icon. For my example, I will use a youtube link.
If you want to create more pages, you can click under the image you have a button for a new page, but if you’re going to keep the same design, you need to click the duplicate page.
Let’s say that we finished, and want to see the final product, and to see if the link is working, which means we need to click on the preview button.
If you are satisfied with the final product, go ahead and click on publish. You will get a pop-up window which will ask you if you want to add it to your post, if yes, click add to a new post, and it will automatically create a post with the story embedded.
Conclusion
After reading this article, we hope that you see the importance of mobile-friendly content, and that is important to cater to your audience on every platform and any device. Mobiles have become our go-to devices to search and look up things, and you need to adjust your content to that.
Google Web Stories are the perfect tool to help you with that; it’s simple and easy to use. Just remember our tips of DO’s and DON’Ts, and you will be on a great way to success.
