3 Reasons to Add Google Business View
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[caption id="attachment_3401" align="aligncenter" width="300"] A car like this already has photos of the exterior of your business. Are you ready to let the photographer inside?[/caption] If you're a music fan, you'll love this: a tour of the legendary Abbey Road studios, courtesy of Google Maps. It's almost as good as actually being there (and, I think, the only way to see inside Abbey Road unless you're a recording artist or someone who works there). It's full of photos, historical information, and even a really cool interactive features that let you mix your own tracks. While you won't be able to offer this level of detail, you can offer prospective customers a peek inside your business with Google Business View.
What is Google Business View?
It's like Google Street View -- the Google Maps feature that lets you zoom in and see images of streets -- only it goes a step further and lets users take a virtual tour of a business. The little grocery store across the street from where I live uses this feature, as I discovered one day when I Googled it, hoping to determine whether the store sold bagels or not. (For whatever reason, I had decided that I didn't want to go out if they didn't have what I wanted, even if it was just across the street.) By taking the virtual tour, I was able to stroll the aisles of the store without leaving my house, and I did, in fact, see bagels on the shelf. So I went over to the store and made my purchase. As you can see from my anecdote, if you run a store or a restaurant, the benefits of adding Google Business View are pretty clear. But what if you run a CNC machine shop or a biomedical textile manufacturing facility? Why would you want to offer people a virtual tour of your facility? Here are a few reasons:- Show people what your facility is really like: As we've touched on before, manufacturing facilities are often thought of as dark and dirty. A virtual tour of your clean and well-lit facility can help to dispel that myth. It can also help prospective employees get a feel for what it's like to work for you.
- Show off your state-of-the-art equipment: Give people a glimpse of your top-of-the-line tools. Your website already tells people that you have the best tools available. Now let them see it for themselves.
- Show that you are up-to-date: Taking advantage of features like these is a great way to show people that your company is hip, with it and ready to play.