Consumers are converting more often through Google

• New features like Google Reservations and Google Food Orders are driving conversions and making online conversion channels more important to invest in.

  With the introduction of key Google product features such as 'Reserve with Google' and 'Google Food Orders,' customers now have a new way to connect and convert as a paying customer with your business, directly online through Google and completely off your site.

With a post-pandemic high of 37% of total customer actions, online actions have tapered but are trending towards positive adoption. In other words, 37% of all consumer actions occurred through a website click, a booking, food order, or online conversation if bookings or food ordering was enabled for the organisation.
People are increasingly turning to Google to help connect directly with businesses. This is especially true when evaluating user behaviour through online and offline conversion channels. For example, when evaluating food orders, bookings, and online conversations as a percentage of the total, excluding online website clicks, we see that the percentage share of total is small – but the rate of growth is accelerating following the implementation of these new features.
New product features like Google Reservations and Google Food Orders allow customers to make bookings or order food directly from the business's listings – saving businesses time and money by reducing the need for customer service representatives.

If you're a business that relies on customers making reservations or ordering food, then Google Reservations and Google Food Orders are important new features for you to leverage. By updating your Listings to reflect the updates of these new features, you can make it easier for customers to find and book your services. In addition, you can use these features to promote your business to new customers who may not be aware of your company.

Google recently started supporting the ability for restaurants to add a first-party link for both Pickup and Delivery via the Google Business Profile API, which means restaurants can manage this aspect of Google Food Orders within Yext. Here are the benefits of doing so:

1. If you previously weren't taking advantage of Google Food Orders, adding a first-party link will result in a new 'Online Order' box that gets featured on your Google Business Profile listing.
2. Providing first-party links for Google Food Orders helps improve your rank in search. The more confident Google is that you support pickup and delivery, the more likely they are to rank your business for those types of searches. After all, think about all the times you've searched on Google for something along the lines of 'Chinese restaurant near me that offers pickup.'
3. Not to mention: adding a first-party link for Google Food Orders also provides more confidence to consumers. When Google isn't certain if you support online food orders, it denotes that right on your listing with text that reads 'may offer delivery' and 'may offer pickup. By providing a URL explicit to delivery and pickup, the 'may offer delivery' and 'may offer pickup' will disappear.

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Disclaimer: This analysis was taken from a sample of Yext customers that saw positive values for Google's new 'Reservations' and 'Food Orders' products. The sample skews towards food services and hospitality customers.