Will someone soon “book online” on your page?
Will this be coming to a country near you (including the UK?)
Our latest posting concerns a new feature added to the platform of Google My Business (GMB) [for some that is, and for now!]
Google has decided to add a button called “book online” which will be added to the profiles of businesses that are registered as advertising on this platform. Google have decided to roll out this feature because it is confident of the benefits that booking buttons can bring and how this can make organisations stand out from their competitors.
The new button is said to allow browsers and potential customers the ability to book with the business in less than one minute! We all know that slow loading features and heavy information driven contact forms put people off. The aim is that with such a short conversion time that more customers will be engaged with the business. The other clever feature is that businesses will be able to test whether this feature has actually worked for them as there will be an analytics option showing just how many eventual bookings have originated from here.
This feature has already been rolled out to many supported booking providers and it will be interesting to see just exactly what organisations think of it once it has had chance to work and results to be processed.
How do you set up the feature?
Firstly if you have an account with one of the supported booking providers then this button will have already been added and is ready to use. If you haven’t got such an account then you will have to get one of these first.
Once you have been through that registration process it may take a few days but you will then have access to this yourself.
Don’t get too excited yet!…
As with many new features and rollouts by Google, it is not a worldwide thing and this is no exception. Currently the rollout is only targeting the USA. This is presumably so the application can be tested and any teething difficulties identified and fixed. The plan is for this to be extended to other countries and businesses generally in the near future so watch this space!
If you own a business and have a GMB page, would you be interested in this feature, and do you think it will make a positive difference to your conversions and company generally? If the process is as smooth and quick as described, then we can really see this being a useful feature. It’s just for now, the initial betting is not how good it will be, but when it will actually come to UK GMB pages!
Find out more on Google My Business and the relationship between business and SEO generally by visiting our small business SEO section.