Google Discovery Engine | web, experiential | Creative Lead & PM
WHAT
In partnership with engineers at Google X, we developed The Google Discovery Engine (GDE) is an externally-facing web destination that visualizes relevant, local searches and trends happening around a business. GDE shows what, when, where, and how nearby users are searching for the products and services a business offers
Phase 1 (left), Phase 2 (right)
AUDIENCE & INSIGHTS
Small business owners (SBOs) – the mom and pops that dot communities across America – these are our bakeries, eye doctors, plumbers, etc – they work, serve, and live on local business
SMB owners are consumers too – ground them in a user behavior they participate as often as anyone else – searching on Google
They’re not aware of the local opportunity surrounding their business – aside from Google Trends, there currently does not exist a tool that reveals local, relevant searches to SMBs
SMB owners are Google users without them realizing it – Majority of them are on Google Search, use Chrome, watch on YouTube, use Gmail
Phase 2 (Homepage) – establishing a ‘living-breathing’ feel, driving urgency, and directly addressing what SBOs are most interested in first – new, potential customers.
CHALLENGE
Small business owners think social, not search when it comes to finding their next best customer
OPPORTUNITY
Strengthen the association between Google Search and the things that SMBs care about – finding new customers
STRATEGIC IDEA
Near me searches, near you opportunity
Contextualize Google’s massive value to SMBs – 5 billion monthly searches for restaurants, 3 billion for hotels, 5 million for coffee shops, etc – in terms that SMB owners will understand: hyper-local (by zipcode), relevant (by vertical) insights tailored to their individual business
SKILLSETS
Product Management – led product’s end-to-end strategy, design exploration, product development, internal alignment, stakeholder roadshowing, and legal/privacy/security processes
Creative Lead & Strategist – primary visioneer of overall experience, spearheaded design framework, structural architecture and go-to-market plan/campaign for launch of GDE
Project Lead – managed team of two engineers (Google X), one agency technical liaison (ATL), and third party agency
End-to-end mapping of GDE product experience: user journeys, touchpoint states, edge cases, etc
End-to-end mapping of GDE product experience: wireframes, designs, user states, etc
MILESTONES
A “Google Trends for Small Business” – a first for marketing org and Google SMB to provide actionable, timely business-related insights based around actual Google search data
Graduation from Phase 1 to Phase 2 – based on promising initial results (2X increase sign-up rate, 4x start rate, 76% completion rate), GDE project funding was increased by 3 fold
Global scaling & Product Integration – initially an Americas region pilot, GDE is slated to expand to APAC and LATAM regions alongside integration into the Google My Business product
