What’s this about?
Although frustrating that this is US only, local businesses being able to take bookings direct from search is fantastic.
This means local businesses can take at least 1 or 2 clicks out of the funnel, which almost always improves revenue and conversions.
Hopefully, it’ll go global soon.
Read this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 27 October 2017.
#SEO #SEONews #GoogleMyBusiness #Revenue #Conversions
Direct Bookings Now Available Through Google My Business
Key Issues Summary:
- Google My Business has now added functionality for US businesses and users to manage bookings directly through a GMB result.
- This enables users to click to book directly from your Google My Business page, or Business panel in search results.
- It’s mainly for restaurants, salons, personal trainers etc, but any business which takes bookings through one of the selected Google partners should be able to eventually use this.
- Note this is currently US only, which is annoying, but a sign of things to come.
Key Actions To Take:
- Assuming you are in the US and in the right business sector, log in to Google My Business.
- If you already use one of Google’s booking partners, your button should have already been added to the listings.
- If you don’t have an account, you will currently need to sign up with one of the providers.
- If your provider is not listed, ask them what they are doing to become a Google Reserve Partner. (There’s a link on the Google Reserve Partners page).
- You will also be able to track booking and revenue stats for this feature through Google My Business.
- If you are non-US, assume that this will roll out to significant markets over the next 3-18 months.
- Click here to contact me to discuss how to optimise your Google MY Business listing to drive more traffic, bookings and revenue.
Insights & Discussion:
Once I got past the “oh it’s only for the US currently” annoyance, I decided I quite like this. It’s almost always beneficial for a click funnel to be shortened to drive increased interaction and conversion. Simply put, the simpler it is for a potential client to do something, the more likely they are to take that action. I call it reducing friction.
There is benefit to Google in this on all sides: they can enable a user to complete their search more quickly; they make Google and Google My Business more useful in the process; and (although it;s not clear), Google probably makes a small amount in either sign-up fees to the partners, or they make a small amount of backend commission for sending the booking, Ultimately, this would be paid by the business, but in the first instance any commission would be paid by the Reserve Partner.
For businesses that can action this, it makes a lot of sense as it is likely to increase bookings, and providing you have proper access to and ownership of the customer data, you can create new customers to keep in contact with and convert to long-term evangelists.
More Information:
The State of SEO Mid-2017 Released
TL;DR
- Local businesses can now take bookings directly through search.
- If you are in the US, and are partnered up with one of Google’s partners that is.
- Try it. See if it increases sales and revenue.
- Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
- Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
- Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.
