The Situation

Many people use Google to find local businesses around them, but some business owners don’t understand how the platform can help them get new customers.

For marketers managing multiple Google Business pages, the Google Business Page Manager can be improved to make marketing easier.

Empathizing with the Users

I created two user personas to help empathize with business and marketers who use Google Maps for marketing. The personas I created are the Small Business Owner and the Digital Marketer.

What I learned from marketing for small businesses

​After managing Google Business pages, I learned that some businesses:

• Believe that adding new products is how their business will grow
• Are frustrated because they don’t know if their Google Business page is effective in generating new customers
• Believe it’s too difficult to temporarily close their business on Google when they need to close during business hours
• Believe that adding and deleting photos from a Google Business page is easy once they are taught how
• Don’t feel the need to reply to customer reviews, even after being taught the value of doing so
• Find it difficult to generate reviews from customers because of a lack of knowledge on how to do so while the customer is at location

Improvement ideas for the Google Business page

​After managing Google Business pages, I learned that some businesses:

• Business owners would rather have an option to mark “Be right back” on their Google Business page, similar to the handwritten sign placed on entrance window.
• Are frustrated because they don’t know if their Google Business page is effective in generating new customers
• The two links to ask for reviews and to go to the Google Business Home Page are located far from each other in the Google UI.
• Can’t take notes to attach to a specific business within the Google Business Page manager. 
• In Analytics, data points that are not active are shown in the same style as active data points which creates confusion.