Grow Product Tour: Teaching Readers Why They Need This

We’ve noticed a trend. Publishers, advertisers, readers and even Mediavine staff members are all asking the time-honored question of 2021: What is Grow?

Even for those of us who live and breathe Mediavine, it’s challenging to digest all the things Grow can do for publishers, let alone why readers should embrace it.

The short answer is it’s a lot. Like a lot a lot. The slightly longer but more helpful answer is this:

Grow is a set of tools built to help you collect first-party data but also grow your audience.

The reason these tools are ever-expanding is because every website is different and every reader interacts with content differently. You all have different goals.

But the very first hurdle any of us have to leap over is getting readers to use Grow. And in order to want to use it, they need to understand it a little bit better.

To help with that, allow us to introduce the Grow Product Tour.

What is the Grow Product Tour?

From this day forward, when a reader creates a Grow account for the first time, they’re taken back to your site for a Grow Product Tour.

The Product Tour will walk readers through the basic features of Grow, helping them understand exactly what they signed up for and how it works.

Readers will be introduced to the Grow widget in the corner of your site and shown how to favorite, retrieve existing bookmarks and update their account.

Want to see it for yourself? You’re in luck. Once again, we’ve prepared a few visuals using Mediavine’s preferred method of communication, the GIF!

Check out the Product Tour in action:

Pretty cool! But better yet, the Product Tour is just the start.

Ultimately, the goal of Grow is creating the best user experience, which helps publishers generate the first-party data advertisers need to drive the most value.

With 400,000 registered users and climbing, we know that helping people better understand and use Grow is paramount to its success.

Moreover, Grow is always changing, not only with the addition of new features but in an effort to become as reader-friendly as possible.

It’s a lot, as we said earlier. But we’re here to help.

Coming Soon: More Reader Education

At its core, Grow isn’t about the publisher.

To be sure, it helps the publisher by harnessing first-party data and authenticated traffic. But without offering real, tangible value to readers, it’s a moot point.

First and foremost, Grow has to provide the kind of user experience that makes visitors want to log in or there won’t be subscriptions or first-party data to be had.

So how can we improve the reader experience? We’re taking it from the top, with a more educational approach from the onset of the sign-up process.

New Sign-up Page

We’re currently testing a new, improved and user-friendly log in flow. When readers sign up, they’ll get a better explanation of Grow via its redesigned sign-in page.

This enhanced preview of Grow will be customized based on what drove the reader to sign up, whether it’s via Spotlight Subscribe, the upcoming Exclusive Content feature (where content is available only to subscribers), etc.

Better still, we’re working on ways for publishers to be able to “co-brand” the sign-up page — including your site’s logo along with Grow to further streamline the process.

Please, continue giving us feedback so that we can address every point where readers are stumbling. We’re proud of where Grow is today — the only first-party data solution of its kind — but it remains a work in progress, and together, we can make it vastly superior by the time third-party cookies vanish for good.