Products and Services on a Local Listing

Two sections, two jobs

Business listings carry a services section and, for many categories, a products section, and they behave differently.

Services are a structured list of what you do, each with a name and an optional description and price.

Products display as cards with an image, a name, a price, and a description, which makes them more visual and more suited to defined items.

A trades business generally wants the first. A shop generally wants both. Almost nobody has filled in either properly.

Why the services list matters

Two reasons, and the second is underrated.

It helps the listing match what somebody searched for, because a listed service is an explicit statement rather than something inferred from your category.

And it is read by customers. Somebody comparing three businesses in a set of results looks at what each says it does, and a listing showing eleven named services reads as a more established business than one showing none.

That comparison happens before anybody visits a website, which is why detail on the listing does work your site cannot.

The effort is an hour, once, and it persists.

List them individually

• One entry per service, not a category.
• The customer's words, not the trade term.
• A short description for each.
• A price or range where you can give one.
• Grouped sensibly if the list is long.
• Reviewed annually so it stays current.

The first is where businesses go wrong: entering plumbing rather than the eight specific things people actually search for and ask about.

Write descriptions for a customer

The part that is skipped, since the field is optional and the name alone feels sufficient.

A short description does two things: it uses the words somebody might search, and it answers the immediate question they would otherwise have to ask.

What it includes, roughly how long it takes, whether it needs an appointment, and what it typically costs.

Two sentences per service is plenty, and it is the difference between a list of names and something a customer can act on.

Take the descriptions from what you already say on the phone, which is the language that works.

A worked example

A repair business had two services listed, both entered when the listing was created and both broad.

They spent an hour listing fourteen, using the phrases customers actually used when phoning, with two sentences and a typical price each.

Nothing else about the listing changed.

Over the following months they began receiving enquiries for two services they had always offered and had never been asked about, because nobody had known they did them.

The owner's assessment was that the hour had been the most productive marketing they had done that year, and that the surprise was not the enquiries but that customers had been reading the list at all.

Prices are the deciding detail

The field most often left blank and the one customers most want filled.

A price, a from figure, or a typical range answers the question somebody is actually holding, and it separates people who are ready from people who are browsing.

The objection is that it varies, which is true and is not a reason to say nothing. From a figure, or between two figures, or depends on size with a typical range, all communicate more than silence.

The other objection is competitors seeing it, who can already phone and ask.

A listing showing prices produces fewer enquiries and better ones, which is the trade most small businesses would take if it were put to them plainly.

The products section

Different in character and worth using where it fits.

It suits defined items with an image and a price: things a shop sells, packages a service business offers, or fixed-price jobs.

The cards display prominently on the listing, which makes them one of the more visible things you can add.

You do not need a full catalogue. Eight to twelve representative items does the work, and a shop with two hundred lines should choose the ones people ask for rather than attempting everything.

Each needs a decent photograph, which is the constraint, and phone photographs of the actual item are fine and frequently better than supplier images.

Keep it current or take it down

The maintenance point, which decides whether this helps or harms.

A price that is two years out of date produces an awkward conversation and sometimes an obligation.

A service you no longer offer produces an enquiry you have to decline, which wastes both parties' time.

Review the list annually, at the same time as your other listing checks, and remove anything you have stopped doing.

Where prices change often enough that maintaining them is unrealistic, use ranges or from figures that stay true longer, rather than exact numbers you will not update.

Where the list actually shows

Worth being clear about, since expectations here are frequently wrong in both directions.

The services list appears on your listing when somebody looks at it in full, rather than in the three-result summary in search.

So it is read by somebody who has already picked you out of a set and is deciding whether to make contact, which is a smaller and more valuable audience than a general impression count.

That is a good reason to write it for a person rather than for matching, and to answer the questions somebody at that stage would have.

It also means the effect appears as better enquiries rather than more of them, which is easy to miss if you are only watching a view count.

The counter-case

This is not universally worth the effort.

For a business with one service and no price variation, a long list is artificial and adds nothing.

Some professions also have restrictions on advertising prices or services, which override any of this and are worth checking rather than assuming.

There is also a risk in listing services you can technically perform but do not want, which fills the diary with work you took because somebody found it on your listing.

List what you want to be asked for, describe it honestly, price it where you can, and leave the rest off.

The hour

1. List every service individually.
2. Use the words customers use on the phone.
3. Write two sentences for each.
4. Add a price or a range.
5. Add eight to twelve products where the section applies.
6. Photograph the actual items.
7. Review and prune annually.

Step one is where most of the benefit is, and most listings currently show two entries where fourteen would be accurate.

Describing what you do is covered in describing a service without listing features.

Frequently asked questions

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