Tell customers on Google Maps which days your optician's shop runs exams and what it carries

How somebody picks an optician on the map

Many people search for glasses, a brand or an eye exam nearby rather than for a shop's name. The listing that answers the search that brought them is the one they visit.

• Brands are how many people compare shops. Someone who liked their last frames looks for that name, and a shop that never lists what it carries is left out.
• Whether an exam is done here, and on which days, decides the visit. The shop being open on Tuesday does not mean an exam is available on Tuesday.
• Frames need no appointment, an exam usually does. If the listing does not say so, people call instead of coming in.
• Lens work is checked next: varifocals, thinner lenses, coatings, tints, or new lenses in a frame the customer already owns.
• Then how long a pair takes and what is done on the spot: straightening an arm, replacing a lost screw, new nose pads, an adjustment.
• Reviews are read for two things: whether the glasses came out right, and how the exam went.

The fields that carry an optician's listing

An optician's listing describes a shop and a service at once. The retail fields answer people choosing frames, the service fields answer people who need an exam, and all of them come from what the shop confirms.

• Categories for both sides: the retail one, plus exam, contact lens or sunglasses categories where Google's list has them and the shop does that work.
• Services written as the shop's own jobs: the eye exam where it runs, contact lens fitting, repeat contact lens orders, new lenses in a customer's own frame, repairs, adjustments.
• Where the profile offers a products section, brands and lens options go there as a dated example of the range, never as a claim that a frame is on the shelf today.
• Hours in two layers: the shop's opening hours, and the exam days, entered as additional hours where your category has them or as a plain sentence where it does not.
• A booking link only where the shop keeps an appointment diary for the exam, pointing to this address and not to a company home page.
• Attributes where your profile offers them: how finished glasses are collected, whether anything is posted, payment methods, languages spoken at the counter.
• The questions the counter hears every day go into the description, the services and the posts: exam days, brands, lenses in the customer's own frame, what happens if a pair comes back wrong.

Settings that suit a shop with frames on the wall and an exam room

Each item is one change inside the profile, the reason an optician's customer notices it, and the Google article that backs it.

1. 1

   Keep the primary category on the shop, and add exams only if they run

   The primary category says what the business is, so it stays the optician's shop. Add an eye exam or optometrist category as an additional one only when exams are really run in the shop on set days. Google asks for a few categories, not one for every product or service.

   Google's help on this: Manage your business category

2. 2

   List each kind of lens work as its own service

   Create a service for contact lens fitting, one for repeat contact lens orders, one for new lenses in a customer's own frame and one for repairs, and say in a line what the customer brings to each. Show a price on a service only where the shop confirms it; a custom service name that carries a price or a phone number is rejected.

   Google's help on this: Manage your services on your Business Profile

3. 3

   Keep the optometrist's leave from closing the shop

   Special hours replace the shop's hours for the dates they cover. When only the exam room is empty, say so in the exam service description and in a post, and keep special hours for days when the shop itself is shut or opens differently, such as stocktaking.

   Google's help on this: How to set Special hours

4. 4

   Choose on purpose whether frames go into Google's product editor

   The product editor is meant for local stores that sell physical goods, and suits those with no online shop, no barcodes or no fresh stock data. Whether a frame wall fits depends on how the shop's products are coded. Google holds product entries to its shopping ads policy, and a breach can take down every product the shop has uploaded. Google's content policy also does not allow content for regulated products such as health or medical devices, so the shop checks that against what it sells. The shop decides, and if it says yes, each line comes out when it leaves the shelf.

   Google's help on this: About product editor

5. 5

   Delete old window photos when the display changes

   Photos appear only after Google reviews them, which can take a day or two, so photograph the new window before a promotion starts. Delete the old window photos when the display changes: a customer who comes for a frame from March blames the listing. Photos must show the shop as it is, in focus and without heavy filters.

   Google's help on this: Manage your Business Profile photos & videos - Computer

What an optician actually has worth publishing

Most of what is worth posting here has a date: exam days, a brand arriving, a seasonal display. The shop supplies the material, and the number of posts follows the package.

• Exam days for the next month, posted early enough for people to plan around them.
• A brand arriving or leaving, with a date so nobody reads the post as permanent.
• Seasonal displays such as sunglasses or back to school, with the end date written into the post.
• What is done while the customer waits: adjustments, screws, nose pads, lenses refitted into a frame that got sat on.
• Practical answers: what to bring to an eye exam, what a contact lens check involves, whether the shop fills a prescription written elsewhere.
• Where advertising of eye care or reimbursement is regulated in your country, the wording follows what the shop confirms.

Where the manager stops and the shop decides