What Is A Web Story?

Google web stories are a collection of pages which contain elements like text, video, sounds and images. The consumer can see these ‘stories’ on the web and click them to view the next screen creating a story.

Before these stories were primarily used on social media channels like Facebook or Instagram. But now this format is available directly on your website or mobile and most importantly can be found on Google.

Allowing these stories to be discoverable on Google makes a huge difference because now anyone can find your story while searching the web. As it is a web page it has a URL and therefore it can be shared anywhere online. Some early adopters of this are showcasing their stories on their home page, social channels, newsletters and more.

5 Steps to creating a Web Story

1. Choose a visual editor

A visual editor is a program that enables you to produce and customise your photos, videos and graphics. Often coming with simple functionality and built-in templates, so you don’t need to be an expert at video editing or design to make beautiful and engaging content.

2. Draft the story

Tell the complete narrative for the best Web Stories from the moment they are published to keep the reader engaged. Since all pages of a story are published at once, it’s important to think through the narrative of your Web Story in the same way you would for a blog post or video.

3. Find the visual assets

Choosing or creating the right imagery or videos is essential for a compelling Web Story. It’s important to remember all full-page videos should be formatted vertically. That way your Web Story will use less bandwidth and load more quickly.

4. Create the Web Story

Once you’ve drafted your story and all your assets in one place, it’s time to start building. When you’re first starting out, using your visual editor’s pre-made templates is the fastest and easiest method to build your Web Story. Stories are an inherently interactive form of media. Viewers can click forward and backward through the pages and follow links to engage. You can also try including quizzes and polls to increase engagement and interaction.

5. Publish the Web Story

Once you’re happy about your Web Story’s media, layout and text it’s time to open it up to the world. When you’re using a visual editor, this is as simple as clicking the Publish button.
And that’s it!

However, Web Story carousels aren’t available in every country just yet. As of the 6th November the “What’s New” section of Google Stories says it’s only available in the United States, India & Brazil. Also its only works on the Google app for Android and iOS.

Also available via a WordPress plugin, again at the time of writing this article MakeStories is only available in six languages (English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian). As with everything Google, development is happening at breakneck speed with talk of Quizzes and polls coming in the future.