Gmail consumer website content strategy

During the summer of 2021 I was working on another project for Google Workspace when a higher-priority content refresh for Gmail required my focus.

I worked with an awesome web lead and a wonderfully collaborative PMM on near-daily content, design, and development sprints to highlight Gmail’s feature benefits for consumers. The main impetus for the refresh was to better highlight how Gmail keeps email private and secure.

There were challenges and pressures. This was an extremely quick-turn, high-visibility update with considerable senior-level attention.

One particular challenge with security messaging was dispelling a perception that Google continues to scan consumer emails to improve the targeting of its advertising, a practice the company ended in 2017 as Gmail in G Suite gained traction in the enterprise. The solution here was to come up with a lead message that didn’t walk away from that history while also celebrating the benefit of encryption at Gmail’s scale.

I urged my team to escalate to executives since the messaging touched on Google Ads practices and insights I’d been exposed to years before. Ultimately I think this accelerated what we crafted. Gmail was the first to bring updated security content among all Google product teams tasked with similar updates.

My PMM, my Web lead, and I wrote and touched every word on this page. Gmail is by far the most high-traffic site I’ve ever worked on. I’m not sure if I’m more proud of that or for hustling all the LGTMs. Given the amount of global traffic this page receives, perhaps I’ve done my part in preserving the Oxford Comma for at least this page’s lifespan.

There were many reviews from many different business areas, including legal, comms, various marketing and product leads, and others. I had a great time with this very cool team.

The previous page (below) had focused on connection, creation, and collaboration that happens through Gmail: