5 things to consider when advertising to women

5 things to consider when advertising to women

Sexism in Marketing and Advertising

Sexism still exists in the media, marketing and even advertising. (Shock) Some of us are quick to call it out, some of us are oblivious it’s still happening, and some of us are just used to it and feel powerless. Sexism and gender inequality exist in the media and, unfortunately, the statistics are quite alarming.

 

Only 1 in 10 ads feature a woman.

– Marketing Week (2021)

Female-targeted Products are Expensive

Let’s split sexism down the middle. Women are featured less in advertising overall, AND female-targeted products and services are priced higher than the made-for-men versions.

You’ve probably heard of the pink tax, but it’s still a problem today. Despite many countries trying to remove the pink tax, it is still legal to price something higher because it is made for women.

In the USA, 22 states introduced bills that would repeal the tampon tax, but none went into law. – Listen Money Matters (2022)

The fact that some perfectly gender-neutral products and services are filtered by gender in the first place is a big problem. Either way, pure sexism in marketing results in an unfair and one-sided story and alienates over half of the consumer base.

In advertising, there is an obvious age gap. Fewer women are represented after a certain age and most women visible in advertising tend to be of a certain age (primarily young)

One thing is for certain though, is that the next generation of women will not tolerate any discrimination of any kind. You better be ready for being ridiculed online and called out for any discriminatory ads or sneaky sexism.

Marketers & Brands can Improve

Society WILL increase its pressure on businesses and brands to do better and to think smarter. So, if you’re not doing it already, you really should be looking at your campaigns up close.

Young women are consuming 10,000 messages a day from brands.
New York Times (2021)

Make sure that your brand, product, or service represents your audience. And if it is women you want to attract – prioritised authenticity and representation now, before it’s too late.

My Bright Digital is a conscientious digital marketing agency that strives to create meaningful campaigns that are inclusive, diverse, and future-proofed. We have put together our top 5 things you should consider to avoid sexism in marketing and advertising.

Be kind: Offer women a feel-good purchase

Women do not need your brand to make them feel better, empower them, or live a better life. Some of them are thriving and doing perfectly well without it. So instead, let them be, and do something for the greater good.

Use your brand to show your compassion, kindness, and willingness to support a more meaningful issue. You can demonstrate charitable deeds and show your wiliness to support a non-for-profit goal. This will attract an empathetic and valuable audience. Remember, three-quarters of consumer purchases are women. So, win them over by doing good. AND they will feel better by being associated with your brand.

Be open: Consider alternative messaging

Using direct language and making assumptions in your marketing message is a big no, it never works. (Did it ever?).

People have desensitised themselves from obvious marketing tactics and promotional traps. Stop telling us what we need, how to feel and what we should be purchasing. Instead, use thoughtful and considered messaging to speak to women.

Stop using these phrases: ‘You need this’ ‘Must have’ ‘You can’t live without’ and ‘Get the look’

Instead offer the alternative, and start using these: ‘Join us’ ‘Be part of this’ ‘Discover more‘ ‘Start something’ and ‘Explore the possibilities’

Be honest: Show your true intention

Being honest is human. When brands make a mistake, they must own up to it, fix it and show what there are going to do next. This is a sure-fire way to gain supporters.

We do not want to be told that we need to include 45,300 steps in our skincare routine, it’s also lying. Anyone can spot an overly airbrushed, filtered image of a model these days. It’s not only a turn-off but it can be damaging to someone’s self-esteem or mindset.

Instead, it’s more inspiring to be told we don’t need to do something. Just being told we’re doing a great job, feeling supported and celebrated might just be the ticket to getting our attention.

Masking your products or services and slapping on the colour green and putting the word ‘kind to the planet’ in front of it, is misleading. Instead, show your brand or service in a true light, with real people, in real situations with the real outcome. Zero carbon footprint or not, they are going to know.

Be helpful: Make their life easier

We are in the decade of problems and so we need more solutions than ever. As a modern society of women, we are trying to fix the world, save the planet, stop the wars, and bring home the bacon.

So, one of the best ways you can be an ally for over half the population is to help them do what they need to do. Solve problems, make life a little bit simpler, and you will quickly see the money rolling in.

Reducing time, saving space, creating less plastic and helping them be the superstars that they already will make a greater difference to your profit margin.

Be diverse

It’s an obvious one, but not many people are getting it right. Women need to be represented in a way that truly reflects the way they are visibly living across the world.

In your advertising campaigns, try to use diverse and inclusive imagery. Showcase a range of women and identities including size, identity, shape, race, abilities, and age.

Situations to avoid: Women cleaning or cooking, with a man looking happy, thin models in underwear or skimpy outfits, women with babies looking happy.

Instead use our FREE Library!

My bright digital has handpicked a small selection of diverse female-led imagery.

This library is 100% free to download. So, get inspired, use it in your campaigns and share away! It should give you an idea of what to aim for when creating a visual campaign and how to get the female audience on your side.

Download your free diverse women image library here.

Liked this blog? Then you may like us! We are My Bright Digital, a boutique digital marketing agency who are trying to do the right thing. We work with brands to improve their digital campaigns increase their ROI and offer consultancy services.

Contact Alex today.

How to Improve and Implement International SEO

How to Improve and Implement International SEO

Local SEO vs International SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising your website content for search engines like Google. SEO is an important part of your digital marketing strategy as it puts your business on the digital map, allowing customers to see you as the answer to their query. 

When we think about SEO, it’s easy to forget that our strategy needs to target customers beyond our immediate neighbourhood. International SEO is not necessary for every business, you might find that local SEO is more pertinent for you. But, in both cases, it’s crucial to analyse your current strategy and adapt for your target audience. 

Imagine you run a bakery that has recipes specifically from your hometown. Your SEO strategy will likely be targeting local and possibly national SEO, but certainly not international (unless you plan to send cakes on a ferry!) How would you adapt your current strategy to target your local audience? 

There are plenty of ways to do so, but here are 8 tips to start optimising for local SEO:

  1. Optimise for your profile on ‘Google My Business’
  2. Engage with your local community on social media 
  3. Ensure your name, address, and phone number are correct on your website and on ‘Google my Business’
  4. Research your local competitors and their messaging
  5. On your website, optimise URL, title tags, headers and meta descriptionAdd location pages to your website with relevent local content
  6. Ensure your website is both desktop and mobile-friendly
  7. Get inbound links with relevance and authority with local partners
  8. Engage with your llocal community through advertising, events and promotional acitivites. I.e. ‘Free tasting samples on Wednesdays’

You might wonder if International SEO is at all possible. Local SEO seems simple enough, but how can you adapt your strategy to target a global audience? International SEO is naturally a little more complex, with a large audience comes even greater responsibility. It’s important to think about how user journeys will differ from person to person in each country.  

Remember, international SEO is also about ensuring a strong search presence, but it aims to drive organic traffic from multiple countries (multiregional SEO) and/or languages (multilingual SEO). An international strategy ensures that search engines can easily identify which countries your business is targeting. It also shows search engines which languages you use to attract customers from different countries. With multilingual SEO, it’s best practice to have your copy translated by a fluent speaker. Stay away from Google Translate! There are many nuances in different languages that translation apps will not understand, and when we’re thinking about creating a great experience for users, technology is not always the solution.

Why is International SEO important?

The primary objective of search engines is to find the highest-quality answer as quickly as possible for its users. As such, they are designed to match search results based on the location and language of the user. If you adapt your SEO strategy for a global audience, your content will find users who require your products or services from different countries.

Imagine you are an e-commerce company that sells jewellery to the UK, US, South America and Asia. If your SEO strategy is only focused on the UK/US audience, you are missing out on millions of potential customers. By adopting an international SEO strategy you will improve the visibility of your products and/or services in global markets. Not only this, but you will also grow a loyal customer/client base and increase conversion rates. You need to ensure your target audience feels at home when they land on your site because you want them to trust your services and convert into a customer.

Improving your current SEO strategy

Changing the language of your copy is not the only way to improve international SEO. Whilst it’s key to reflect the cultural context of different audiences by writing copy that reflects their cultures, international SEO goes far beyond translation. It can feel a bit overwhelming to suddenly realise that you have to adapt your SEO strategy for a much bigger audience. But don’t worry, at My Bright Digital, we’re here to give you some guidance on how to start improving your international strategy. 

Here are some of our suggestions:

  1. Market research
    Learn more about what people are looking for in your market.
  2. Content research
    Find out what your audiences are interested and then tailor your content towards trending and relevent topics. 
  3. Keyword research
    Use particular key words for different locations
  4. Approach your strategy from a holistic perspective
  5. Consider the entire user journey!
  6. Use Multiple domains and Landing Pages
    Have different domains for different countries with optimized content in that language
  7. Seperate Local Content
    Use dedicated URLs for localised content
  8. Link Build towards pages
    Create a link building strategy for each market
  9. Define your websites language and geographical targeting
    Use the hreflang attribute, specifiy what language your copy is in and what locations your content is for
  10. Use culturally appropriate imagery
  11. Reflect culture in your website design by using local imagery of local people or scenarios.

The key to building a strong international SEO strategy is to get to know your audience and anticipate their needs. All international strategies are different, and the amount of research you put in is reflected in the outcome. At My Bright Digital, we have plenty of experience in international SEO and are here to help if you want to take a deeper dive into improving your strategy.

Many different tools can help with international SEO and save you time during the research process. This list is not extensive, but these are some of our favourites.

  1. Google Search Console
  2. Google Analytics
  3. SEMRush
  4. Moz
  5. Ahrefs

The Benefits of International SEO

First and foremost, SEO that is optimised to an international audience will grow your business, increase revenue and expand your customer base. These seem like pretty worthy trade-offs for some research and improvements to your SEO strategy. The truth is that the benefits of international SEO are limitless, by establishing your business in the global markets you are proving yourself to be a trust-worthy company that is worthy of the loyalty your customers/clients have for your brand. 

Furthermore, with an effective strategy, you can discover where your wins and losses are coming from. For example, you can discover if specific keywords are ranking higher than others, and use trending keywords to create content. You can also understand precisely what stops your potential customers from proceeding to the sales cart, or if they do reach that stage, what stops your customers from making the purchase. Having greater insights into your customers can only bring good things and international SEO can expand the horizons of your business permanently.

Advice From the SEO Experts

Fancy a chat with our team of experts? Fill out our contact form and we will get in touch!

5 things to consider when advertising to women

What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Digital marketing is a minefield of acronyms and jargon. You don’t need to be an expert in digital marketing to optimize your website. There are a few fundamentals that are worth doing to optimize your business online. One of the key aspects to understanding your customer’s behaviour can be revealed with conversions. 


What is a conversion?

A conversion can refer to any desired action that you want the user to take.

Some examples of conversion rates are:

  • Clicking on a video
  • Subscribing to a newsletter
  • Downloading a PDF
  • Submitting a form

What is a conversion rate?

A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a specific action that has been set up as a conversion. 

A high conversion rate indicates that your website has been designed effectively with the user experience in mind. If a website is poorly designed it will lead to lower conversion rates and potentially high bounce rates, with less traffic. Slow load speeds, inconsistent formatting, broken forms or overtly complex copy (or text) can damage your conversion rates.


How to track conversion rates

Tracking and optimising conversion rate is an important branch of the digital marketing tree. Business owners and marketeers need to know if conversions are performing more poorly or more successfully than expected so that they can adapt as needed. Tracking conversion rate data throughout the year is a great way of analysing your digital marketing efforts. Understanding where your wins and losses come from is the best way to learn more about conversion rate optimisation, so you can adapt your strategy for the future to achieve CRO success.

Why not check out our CRO case studies, to see how we have improved conversion rates for our clients?

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Optimising your conversion rates is a crucial digital marketing practice that can help businesses achieve their goals whilst learning the keys to conversion rate success. Improving your conversion rate begins with analysing the current data. When analysing your conversion rate, the first step is to find your industry’s benchmark. These range widely across different sectors, and having this data alongside your current analytics can help identify whether your strategy needs adapting. 

If you’re curious to know what the 2022 conversion rate benchmarks are for websites and devices, Smart Insight’s data (2022) found that  “10% of website users prefer a call direct button rather than sign up form”.

Whilst data is very important when it comes to conversion rate optimisation, we should also remember that it is individuals who drive these numbers in the first place. If your optimisation strategy is not user-centric, then it is unlikely that it will be successful. At MBD, we believe in a holistic approach to CRO that looks at what attracts visitors to your website, what blocks them from getting any further and what convinces them to stay. By focusing on these things, we can give users the best experience possible which in turn will lead to greater conversion rates and customer and/or client loyalty. 

Focusing on the final conversion is important, but in reality, the user goes on an entire journey before they reach this point, and it is through understanding the journey that we can optimise our conversion rates appropriately. 

So you’ve analysed your data, compared it to the benchmark of your industry and are beginning to think about the users. What’s next? Well, try asking yourself the following three questions.

  • What ATTRACTS people to our website?
  • What BLOCKS people from moving on in their journey?
  • What CONVINCES people to convert? 

Often the answers to these three questions will highlight the key areas of weakness and strength in your current optimisation strategy. However, when you’re working on optimising your strategy, not all problems have an easy answer. Sometimes there’s a simple error that is blocking a form from loading, other times there might be no data to explain why a specific conversion has a low rate. When this happens, we dig deeper into the user journey and unravel the mystery behind the current rates.

Imagine that you’ve been tasked with improving the conversion rate optimisation this month for webinar sign-ups. However, you have no hard data to make sense of why current rates are so poor.

Follow your customer’s journey
What do you do next? In short, you analyse the user journey for this specific conversion.

Your product is a webinar for productivity at work. How would a website user even begin that journey? What is their state of mind? Someone searching for this product would probably start by feeling overwhelmed or stressed by their current workload. After attempting to resolve the issue themselves they might search ‘how to increase productivity at work’ in Google. The SERP will bring up so many different articles and lists in response to the user’s question that they might feel even more stressed than before! They might leave the computer for a few days and then return to search ‘how to be less stressed at work’. 

If they typed this into google and the first thing they saw was a blog article that linked to your website with easy information that reassured the user, they might click on the link. After reading through your blog post, they may try out a few of the tips that you have given. Maybe they return to your website three weeks later for another article and see a banner at the bottom that is advertising a webinar about stress and productivity at work. They might click the banner and investigate the webinar, but there’s no saying they’ll sign up there. The user might revisit this page several times before deciding to fill out the form, they might even submit a contact form to ask the company questions before choosing to attend. 

Have we lost you? It’s certainly muddling. The point is that the user journey is not simple. It is often over a long period and involves several interactions with the website before the desired conversion is taken. From the example above we can see multiple touchpoints that could have blockers to prevent the user from converting. 

Unlocking the secrets of CRO requires patience, deep analysis and sometimes a little bit of help. At My Bright Digital, we offer a Conversion Rate Optimisation service that may help you if you’re feeling a little stuck.

A/B Testing for CRO

One way MBD optimises conversion rate is through split-testing different potential blockers of the user journey. 

Using the productivity webinar example, there are a variety of options that could be preventing the user from converting:

What if the blog post had nonsensical copy?

What if they missed the webinar banner because it was only placed at the very bottom of the page?

What if the webinar form required information from them that they did not want to give?

Once you have identified what might be preventing a user from converting, how do you optimise this? One idea is split-testing. Using the idea of the banner, you might split-test having the banner in different places on the web page. The banner might be shown at the top of the page to one group of visitors, the middle to another group and the bottom to another. By measuring the data from this split test you can get a pretty good idea of which placement is the most successful, and optimise this in light of the data.

Split-testing isn’t the only way to improve conversion rates. Here are some other ideas for CRO:

  • Add a pop-up to your site
  • Remove unnecessary sign-up form fields
  • Add testimonials, reviews, and logos to build postive reputation
  • Remove distractions, uncessisary pop ups and outdated videos
  • Make the initial step really easy, sign up in three simple steps
  • Strengthen your CTA call to action within your site copy
  • Add live chat to your site if you want a direct line to your customers

If you’re interested in more ideas for CRO, we recommend reading through HubSpot’s blog post.

The mystery of CRO may feel like it’s never-ending, but the more you optimise your conversion rates the easier it will be to adapt your strategy in the future. 

Speak to CRO experts
At My Bright Digital, our CRO experts have optimised strategies for a variety of clients including B2C and B2B companies. We understand the bug-bears of CRO, and are here to help you avoid any painstaking obstacles that could lead to time-wasting or pulling your hair out!

There is always room for further optimisation as people’s behaviour changes and further conversions are introduced. At MBD, we have the experience to help guide you through the minefield of CRO whilst also explaining our methods. We believe in empowering our clients by growing their own knowledge of digital marketing and are always on hand to answer any questions they may have.

CRO Advice From The Experts

Fancy a chat with our team? Fill out our contact form and we will get in touch!

Kickstart Your Digital Marketing Career

Kickstart Your Digital Marketing Career

Is Digital Marketing the right career for you?

When we hear the phrase ‘digital marketing’, many think of social media. memes, gifs, trending posts and TikTok. When in fact this is one small branch of the digital marketing tree. SMM or Social Media Marketing is important, but it’s not necessarily the first digital point of contact that a prospective customer may have with a brand.

So, if acronyms like SEO, PPC and CMS are sounding a little off-putting to you, remember that digital marketing is equally creative and analytical. Even if you’re purely working in social media marketing, you need to be able to analyse the results to ensure that your work is having a positive impact.

The beauty of digital marketing is that no day is the same. It requires analysing customer trends and working out what that customer needs, wants and desires. It requires forward-thinking and great organisational skills. As any digital marketer knows, having a content calendar and a clearly outlined marketing plan is the way to success.

If you are looking for a challenging career with storytelling at its heart, then digital marketing may be right for you.

Agency vs In House Marketing

Once you’ve decided that you want to start your career in digital marketing, you’ll want to investigate whether you’d prefer to work for an agency or in-house.

What is Agency Marketing?

  • Work with a variety of businesses
  • Gain knowledge in different industries
  • Become an expert in balancing multiple task lists
  • Develop fruitful client relationships
  • Help shape your client’s futures

What is In House Marketing?

  • Work with one specific brand/business
  • Gain high-level knowledge within the industry
  • Become an expert in your brand’s tone of voice and messaging
  • Develop fruitful in house relationships
  • Leave a lasting impact
  • Help shape the future of the business

Both agency and in house marketing have their pros and cons, but it is entirely personal preference as to which suits you better. If you prefer working within a variety of industries, agency marketing is probably the right choice for you. However, if you prefer gaining a deep understanding of one specific industry or company, in house might be a better fit.

So, what is Digital Marketing?

The ‘tree’ of digital marketing is made up of many different branches that come together to create a connected journey for the prospective customer or client. We won’t go into all the different departments as that’ll be an entire blog post in itself! But these are the major players of digital marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is one of the bigger branches on this tree. Essentially, SEO focuses on improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your website so that people on Google can easily find your business.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising is a paid advertising model where the business only pays when they receive a click on their ads. Common examples of PPC are Google Ads, LinkedIn ads and Facebook Ads.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is just as it sounds! Writing tailored email content for your brand’s loyal subscribers, giving them exclusive offers or updates and rewarding customers for staying loyal to you. Email is a great way of keeping the conversation going with your clients or customers, and ensuring they keep returning to you.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is about creating valuable, high-quality, relevant and consistent content that is distributed on different platforms. From website blog posts and articles to social media stories and videos, in digital marketing content is king with video continuing to storm ahead in popularity.

These are just a few of the branches that make up digital marketing, there’s a whole world out there for you to explore. We know it can be daunting starting a career in digital marketing with so much to learn, but there are some brilliant free resources online to help you get started.

Learn Digital Marketing for free

We know it can be daunting starting a career in digital marketing with so much to learn, but there are some brilliant free resources online to help you get started.

The internet is the best place to learn for free, and digital marketing resources are available far and wide. From blog posts to podcasts to videos to courses and so much more, these are some of My Bright Digital’s favourite digital marketing resources:

My Bright Digital’s Advice

There are so many different ways to kickstart your digital marketing career and there is no one size fits all approach. With that in mind, here are the top tips from the team at My Bright Digital.

Alex

“Don’t be afraid. Get things wrong, mess up and make big mistakes. That is the best way to learn quickly. Digital Marketing is incredibly flexible and never permanent. You can always change, swap, edit, improve and enhance your marketing efforts. Use your wider network and ask questions from a range of people who have different experiences and skillsets.”

Tabitha

“Consume as much marketing knowledge as you can. Read, watch and listen to different sources and authors so you can understand the truly vast landscape that is digital marketing. Remember, even CMO’s don’t stop learning!”

Fancy a chat with our experts? Fill out our contact form and we will get in touch!

What are Core Web Vitals?

What are Core Web Vitals?

Are you drawing a blank when you think of the words Core Web Vitals? What do they do, why are they important, how could this affect your business? Well we are here to explain exactly what they are, and how you can use them to your advantage.

Google officially launched Core Web Vitals in 2021, as a new way of ranking website SEO, with the ultimate goal of giving a user the best experience possible. These three metrics ultimately determine the visibility of your website, and therefore the amount of people that can find your business online. 

The three metrics that make up core web vitals are Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift. Whilst this jargon may sound highly technical, there are some simple guidelines you can follow to ensure your website scores highly for each one. 

What is the Largest Contentful Paint?

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is effectively content loading speed, how long does the largest image on your website take to load for the user. Content forms include both media and text, what’s important is ensuring users aren’t left waiting to see what your website has to offer. 

To get a healthy score for this metric, your page’s content must load in less than 2.5 seconds. Anything over 4 seconds will receive a poor score. Think of it this way, don’t you get frustrated when you click onto a website and it takes ages to load? You are making the user’s journey inherently easier by giving them access to the content they want quicker, meaning it’s more likely they’ll stay on your website for longer.

So, how do you prevent long loading speeds? By ensuring the sizing of your media is optimised for your website hosting, which suggest the recommended dimensions for you. Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) is another way to make images load faster, companies like Image Engine optimise your images for you.

Other quick wins are avoiding JavaScript to load your images, let your browser do this and prevent possible loading delays. Make sure to choose a good hosting service for your website, one that is suitable for your website’s size and volume of content. Finally, choose an appropriate image format like JPEG, that can be compressed easily. Avoid PNG files if you can, as they are larger files that result in higher load speeds.

The key with this metric is speed, we want to make our user’s journey as quick and painless as possible, so continue to check the health of your website and optimise it’s content for Largest Contentful Paint.

Largest Contentful Paint Example

What is the First Input Delay?

First Input Delay (FID) is the metric that measures interactivity on your website. Essentially this measures the time from a user’s first click on the page to when the browser responds. Examples of first inputs are clicking links or buttons, pressing a key command, clicking into a chat box, etc. 

First Input Delay is measured in milliseconds, and it measures the delay of the input not the actual processing. This metric is important in helping you ensure the loading of important information on your website doesn’t feel unresponsive or slow. A good score is anything less than 100 milliseconds, and a poor score is anything over 300. 

Similar to LCP, this metric is about giving users the information they want as quickly as possible. The quicker it is for a user to access what they want, the more likely they are to return to your website. Google is prioritising websites that give users high-quality content quickly, when we live in a world where we are overwhelmed by choice of content providers, speed becomes a crucial factor. 

Our recommendations for optimising your FID score are as follows. Remove third-party scripts, or certainly the ones that aren’t crucial as they can delay your own scripts’ actions. Prioritise which scripts provide the most value for the user, and remove the ones that do not. Minimise and compress your code which will reduce the file size and make the code perform quicker. Remove any unused CSS, this gives your browser fewer actions to perform which increases the speed of FID. 

Again speed is crucial for this metric, but it all comes down to the coding of your website and the list of tasks your browser has to perform before it can load the content a user has clicked on. Make the browser’s job as easy as possible by giving it only crucial tasks. When optimising this metric, always choose what to remove by considering the impact it may have on both the user and the score.

First Input Delay Example

What is Cumulative Layout Shift?

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) focuses on your website pages’ stability. A particularly important one for mobile users, this is about ensuring your website content is optimised for all devices. When a user loads a website, or clicks on a link or even scrolls down the page, sometimes the website layout will shift on the screen which can confuse and frustrate the user. 

This issue generally affects mobile users more than desktop, as many websites are only optimised for a desktop device. Scoring positively on this metric can prevent users from accidentally clicking on the wrong link or being shown content they don’t want. This can result in frustrating users losing out on potential customers.

A score of 0 means the page is completely static, but a good score is anything below 0.1 and a poor score is anything above 0.25. To improve your CLS score, always include width and height dimensions on your images and videos, this means the browser will allocate the correct amount of space for your media to load. Ensuring the browser knows the aspect ratio of your website’s media also helps improve CLS. 

Ads tend to be the biggest troublemakers for CLS, prevent ads negatively impacting the score by statically reserving space for the ad slot. Eliminate content shifts by reserving the largest size possible for the ad slot to cater for any potential ad layout errors. Avoid placing ads near the top of the viewport, if they are lower down on the page they are less likely to shift. The same goes for embeds and iframes, make sure to reserve enough space! 

Font is the final piece of the puzzle, downloading a new webfont can result in FOUT or flash of unstyled text, where the default font flashes before displaying the new one. FOIT or flash of invisible text can also cause problems, where ‘invisible’ text is displayed until a new font appears. Font loading API’s can help resolve these problems, and improve your CLS score.

The layout of your website is what matters here, but crucially that it remains static and displays the correct information to the user. We want to make their journey as easy as possible, poor CLS could affect not only a single user’s experience but potential users also as your site could garner a negative reputation. Regularly audit your website using Google Lighthouse to ensure you are optimised for Cumulative Layout Shift.

Cumulative Shift Layout Diagram

How can Google Lighthouse Help?

Google Lighthouse is a great tool that generates reports which specifically focus on the core web vitals metrics. It shows you the performance of each metric and offers optimisation suggestions to help improve your score. Although for the most part the issues that impact core web vitals are what we’ve mentioned in this blog post, we recommend diving into the depths of a Lighthouse report to get a detailed breakdown of what can cause poor scores.

It is important to ensure all three metrics are performing well, as they naturally work in tandem with one another. Approach your core web vitals optimisation from a holistic perspective, and ensure any new content you upload to your website is optimised for Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift.

Future-proof your SEO Marketing

So what does this tell us? Clearly, mobile-search is the future. Google prioritises websites that cater to mobile users which means fast load times, smart design layouts and an easy experience for the user. If you are a company who values your presence on Google Search, then future-proof your marketing strategy by running a regular health check of your website. If history tells us anything, it’s clear that Google is continuing to focus on a user-centric approach. 

With this in mind, when creating new content, consider the impact it will have on the user’s journey. Not only in consuming the content, but from the moment a want enters their head that you can supply. From first google search to clicking checkout, prioritise your user’s journey and optimise your content for core web vitals.

Speak to the My Bright Digital Team about how we can optimise your website for SEO and improve your core web vitals.