[Editor’s Note: Our regular feature where we ask communicators to spot trends and tell us how they and their organizations are reacting to them. This week we hear from Scott Sleek, director of news and information, Association for Psychological Science.]
The Trends: We’ve seen several trends. In general they are a reflection of changes in digital media consumption. They include the rise in importance of mobile platforms and web design, specifically how homepages function.
Several years ago, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) set out to make its website homepage a hub for news about the compelling scientific findings being published in its scientific journals. The news team created press releases and blog posts with catchy illustrations that helped make psychologicalscience.org a highly relevant and engaging site for science reporters and the general public, not just for APS members.
Website traffic increased exponentially over the next few years. The APS team took pride in creating a site that became the centerpiece of its public relations mission: to share APS’s science for the public good and to foster support for publicly funded social and behavioral research.
Homepage as Gateway No More
But more recently, APS’s analytics showed something that – as it discovered upon further examination – was happening throughout the online world. The APS homepage no longer was functioning as a true gateway into the association’s content.
Organic searches and links from the APS Facebook and Twitter pages were driving traffic to individual pieces of content. But psychologicalscience.org was failing to keep people on the site for long periods. Most never read more than the single article they found through a Google search.
The site’s web design also had become outdated, mainly because it was not design responsive. And because Google had begun prioritizing mobile-optimized content for searches made on handheld devices and tablets, the site’s ability to reach the rising number of mobile users with strong content was in jeopardy.
Thus, the organization’s engagement with the very people it was trying to reach was suffering—largely because APS hadn’t fully adapted to trends in digital media consumption.
The Reaction:Over the past year, APS has completely overhauled its website into a design-responsive, uncluttered experience and added additional user-friendly navigation features.
And APS has stopped relying on the homepage to be the entryway for people to learn about the organization. Each piece of content now includes a sidebar of related content to keep visitors traversing the site and engaged in the organization’s overall message.
The team also created a research topics page, updated regularly with collections of articles that discuss topics of public interest, such as political polarization, cultural diversity and environmental stewardship. APS is marketing these pages through a variety of means, including e-newsletters that are sent to members, as well as via Facebook and Twitter pages. (It’s worth noting that APS social media followers include many reporters, students and people generally interested in the subject matter.)
These changes have yielded promising results. Since the November 2016 launch, mobile access to the site is up nearly 30% from the previous months and overall page views on the site are also up year over year. But what’s most encouraging is that bounce rates have dropped substantially, indicating that the team’s efforts are seeing sharp improvements in reader engagement.
This experience illustrates why it is wise to make sure your website is not only optimized for mobile screens, but also sticky enough to keep people clicking from one page to another. Visitors are unlikely to find you through a side door on your site.
While an attractive home page is important (it’s your front door after all), it’s a good idea to expect other parts of your website to be the main entry points for new visitors.
Contact: [email protected]