Projects tagged “SEO”

How to win book lovers’ attention

Rethinking Category Pages layout variations as a scalable system

When I was the lead designer of their SEO team, Scribd was still something like a hydra with two heads. Born as a place for uploading and sharing PDFs, it expanded into a book and audiobook subscription service, adding a Premium catalog of titles that became the core of the business model. But the overflowing volume of user-generated documents that made their SEO strategy so effective also meant Google didn’t recognize Scribd as a place for book readers. The SEO Product Manager set things in motion by redesigning key landing pages of the Premium book catalog. My first task was to redesign the Category Pages to capture readers’ attention and drive them to the Title Page, the highest-converting surface we had. It was a long and articulated project, and I laid out some ambitious goals: designing a modular layout structure that would allow for future experimentation; creating a content flow that would keep visitors engaged with the page as long as possible; and expanding our newly born design system with components that could benefit the site at large.

Crafting a compelling Book Series page

Expanding the acquisition surfaces as part of the SEO strategy

This was the last project I worked on at Scribd, and a very interesting one for a bookworm and series reader like me. Building on the design system components and visual choices from my previous project, the Category Pages redesign, I put together an experience aimed at being the best one could find on the web. Most series readers fall in love with characters and world-building, and look at the plot as a way to get deeper into both. But Wikipedia tends to be their only friend, often the only reliable place to track all the titles in a series and their correct order. My designs for Scribd’s Series Page had the potential to be just as informative and exhaustive, while putting forward an offer hard to resist: subscribe, and you can read all of these titles in one place.

Using immersive reading for SEO acquisition

Editorial design for MasterClass’ Instructor Pages and Articles

At the time I joined the team, a new Product Manager was taking the lead on rebuilding MasterClass’ SEO strategy, moving away from the simplistic approach of publishing as many Articles as possible. Loosely connected to the platform’s offering, all Articles shared one template with a brief text randomly interrupted by promos and CTAs trying to divert readers’ attention toward the subscription. The Product Manager wanted stronger alignment with both the brand and the audience. He kicked things off with Instructor Pages, a new format of SEO articles telling the compelling stories of MasterClass’ popular instructors, with the goal of ranking high on SERPs and drawing higher-intent traffic. My task was to design a new template where immersive reading would organically lead into conversion, with the possibility of reusing and adapting the new layout and components to retrofit the older Articles.