Why Web Stories Are Actually Worth Your Time

I thought they were a gimmick

Look, I've seen every 'next big thing' come and go since 2009. Most of it is just busywork designed to keep us clicking. When I first saw Web Stories, I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. 'Great,' I thought, 'now we're turning the entire internet into a cheap Instagram clone.' I was wrong. It happens.

After messing around with them for a few clients who were desperate for a traffic boost, I realized something. Web Stories, and what's great about them, isn't the flashy animations or the vertical format. It’s the real estate. Google is basically handing out free visibility in the Discover feed and Image search to anyone willing to play ball with this format. It's a gold rush, and most people are still stuck writing 3,000-word blog posts that nobody reads past the second paragraph.

The mobile experience actually doesn't suck

Most websites are a nightmare on a phone. Pop-ups. Slow loading. Content that jumps around while you're trying to click a link. It’s a pain in the neck. Web Stories fix that because they're built on AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). They load instantly. It's snappy. You tap, you see the info, you move on. People's attention spans are basically non-existent now—mine included—and this format respects that reality.

I remember a client last year who was obsessed with 'dwell time' on their long-form articles. They were getting maybe 40 seconds. We turned that same info into a 10-slide Web Story. People finished the whole thing. Why? Because it felt like a snack, not a five-course meal they didn't have time to eat.

You actually own the thing

This is the real kicker. If you post a story on Instagram or a video on TikTok, that platform owns your audience. If they change the algorithm tomorrow, you're toast. Web Stories live on your own domain. You get the SEO juice. You get the adsense revenue. You get the traffic data in your own Google Analytics. It's your house, your rules. That's a no-brainer for anyone who's tired of being a digital sharecropper for Mark Zuckerberg.

Things people mess up (don't do these)

• Using too much text. If I wanted to read a book, I'd buy one. Keep it to one or two punchy sentences per slide.
• Bad images. Since this is a visual medium, blurry stock photos will kill your click-through rate faster than a 404 error.
• No call to action. I've seen so many beautiful stories that just... end. Tell people where to go next!

The 'Google Discover' factor

Here's the thing. Google Discover is a massive traffic driver that most people don't understand. It's that feed on your phone's home screen. Web Stories are the VIP guests at that party. Because Google wants this format to succeed, they're shoving it in front of millions of eyes. I've seen brand new sites with zero authority get 50k visitors in a weekend just because one Story hit the Discover feed. It's wild. It feels like cheating, honestly.

Is it a lot of work? Kinda. You have to think about design and rhythm. But compared to the slog of trying to rank for a competitive keyword in standard search? It's a breeze. I'm telling my clients to stop overthinking it. Just take your best-performing 'how-to' content, chop it up into ten slides with some decent vertical photos, and hit publish. It's not rocket science.

Final thoughts on the format

Web Stories aren't going to replace your blog. They shouldn't. But as a way to grab people who are bored and scrolling on their phones? They're unbeatable right now. Don't wait until everyone else is doing it and the market is saturated. By then, Google will probably have moved on to some other weird experiment anyway. Grab the traffic while it's easy. Seriously.