Google Maps Is Bringing New Features To Enhance Interactivity And Immersion

Look what Google is up to this time! The company will raise the level of interactivity of Google Maps through immersive vision.

The new features are called Immersive View and Live View and are built with advanced artificial intelligence, Street View data and aerial imagery.

But, stay calm! In this article I will try to illustrate in the best possible way how you can use interactivity to attract more customers. Come with me!

What is Google Maps Immersive View?

In short, the immersive view is a new Google feature that will improve the navigation experience through Maps.

And so what’s actually new, since today we can already access Street View and can walk around (almost) anywhere in the world? We can also see information about businesses near us or elsewhere, calculate distances, create markers, etc.

Well, now we can see all this in the current context of the location. It’s like we put together the weather information, space and how busy the place is.

Forget it, it’s hard to explain in words. Just take a look at this video from Google itself:

Are you the sort of person who needs to get the feel of somewhere before you commit? 🗺

With immersive view on Google Maps, you can see what a neighborhood is like before you even set foot there📍

✨ Coming to more cities in the next few months ✨#googlelivefromparis pic.twitter.com/VPvqHP25ai

— Google Europe (@googleeurope) February 8, 2023

See how it gets more fluid and reliable? Now imagine you needing information like this instantly.

I can project myself passing in front of a cafe I didn’t know and pointing my cell phone at its facade. It would be great to find out what time it closes or what its Instagram is without stopping to ask.

It seems to me that it would work for introverts or hurried customers at first, but the practicality just catches on.

Here is an image that better exemplifies the functionality:

And finally, that difficulty of finding the door of a building or not trusting whether a certain establishment still exists in that Google car capture from two years ago is over.

With aerial images, Google Maps will make it possible to fly over a location and find all current angles. Finally!

And what is Indoor Live View?

This new feature of Google Maps will allow people to walk around establishments virtually.

The new function uses neural radiance fields (NeRF), an advanced AI technique that recreates the full context of an environment, including the texture of materials, lighting and what’s in the background, so you can get a sense of the place before you visit it.

One of the innovations that caught my attention is this arrow that indicates where the bathroom, exit and accommodation are located. As in the following image:

The technology should arrive first at airports, train stations and malls in large cities, including New York, see?

Local business opportunities

You must have already understood how to benefit from this technology, but it’s good to be clear, isn’t it?

With Live View searches you’ll take advantage of many more opportunities from local visitors. After all, anyone with access to a smartphone will be able to find your website and information about your business when passing by.

While with Indoor Live View, you can show your establishment in an interactive and far more practical way. This will certainly be an application that will give a competitive advantage to those who know how to do it.

Businesses benefiting from immersive vision

This is where we merge the digital with the physical. Here are some examples of businesses that can benefit from the immersive view of Google Maps:

• Bars and restaurants
• Cafes and Bakeries
• Pet Shops
• Beauty salons and cosmetics stores
• Gyms
• Construction Materials
• Clothes store
• Schools
• Real Estate

How to offer interactivity?

All you need is an updated Google My Business account for your business to appear in the Live View of Google Maps. It’s that simple!

Here’s a simple step-by-step for you to create your page on Google My Business:

1. Access Google My Business
2. Click on “Manage now”
3. Complete the registration form to confirm location and contact details
4. Keep your page up to date
5. Ask your customers to rate service, support and product on Google

On Rock Content’s blog you can check How to Optimize Your Google My Business Page among other information.

Finally, interactivity doesn’t have to stop there, because interactive content also plays an important role in sales.

One research showed that interactive content delivers 52.6% more engagement than static content, reinforcing that people are very interested in this format.

Even Apple used interactive content to launch its iPhone 14 models in 2022.

Shall we talk more about this? Hold until the end. It’s worth it!

Could this be Google’s Metaverse?

It’s no wonder that last year we only talked about Metaverse. Users increasingly seek interactivity and brands need to be aware of this movement.

That’s why we need to discuss interactivity in content production.

Now, is it possible to apply interactivity in content marketing in a simple way to enhance experiences and results?

Yes! A good example is in the case study in which my friend Guilherme Rezende used interactive content to increase the conversion of an ebook.

He chose one of the quick starters from our interactive content tool (Ion), developed another 3 different pages to test the conversion rate of each one and used the tool’s resources to measure the one that gave the best result.

It’s clear that the tool pilot’s advanced growth hacking skills turned the campaign into a victory.

But in the end, the user found a much more satisfying result than the original static landing page: 20.7% growth in conversion rate!

And as interactivity has registered more and more success, I would bet that you will sell more this year if you put efforts into Live View, creating interactive content, among other strategies like these.

Do you want to continue to be updated with Marketing best practices? I strongly suggest that you subscribe to The Beat, Rock Content’s interactive newsletter. There, you’ll find all the trends that matter in the Digital Marketing landscape. See you there!