Entrance and Interior Photos on Your Listing

The photos people check first

Someone about to visit a place for the first time usually looks through the photos on its Google listing. They are checking two things: how to find it, and whether they will feel comfortable once inside.

Many listings answer neither. A logo, a close-up of a product, a photo from the opening party, and whatever customers happened to upload.

The photographs that help a first visitor are plain ones. The street, the door, the room.

They take an hour to shoot with a phone, and they do a job no amount of text can.

What a first-time visitor wants to see

• The building from the street, as a driver or walker approaches it.
• The entrance up close, with the sign or unit number readable.
• Where to park, or the nearest stop if most people come by transit.
• The first view inside the door: a counter, a host stand or a waiting area.
• The main room at an ordinary moment, in ordinary light.
• Access details, such as steps, a ramp or a lift.

The second is the photo most listings lack. A wide shot shows the building, but only a close shot shows which of three doors is yours, and the door is the part people get wrong.

Why the door matters more than it seems

A business that is easy to find on a map can still be hard to find on foot: a unit at the back of a plaza, a door on a side street, a second floor above other shops.

A visitor who cannot find the way in within a minute or two may give up and go somewhere they can see.

Interior photos do a quieter job. People who are nervous about a new place, or bringing a group, or arriving in a wheelchair, want to know what they are walking into.

The logo does neither job.

Taking the outside shots

Stand where a customer arrives: across the street, at the edge of the parking lot, at the bottom of the stairs. Take the photo from there, at eye level.

Shoot at the hours you are busiest. A place that opens in the evening needs an evening photo with the sign lit, because that is what people will be looking for.

Get close enough to the door that the name or unit number can be read on a phone screen.

Wait for the delivery truck to move. Not to hide anything; just so the door can be seen.

Taking the inside shots

Photograph the room as a customer sees it on walking in, not from behind the counter.

Turn on every light, open the blinds, and shoot when the room is tidy but not empty. A completely empty room can look closed.

Leave customers' faces out unless they have agreed. The back of a head, or a busy room at a distance, is fine.

Add one photo of each space people book or use: the private room, the patio, the waiting area, the treatment room.

A worked example

A karaoke bar occupied the second floor of a building on a busy commercial street, above a restaurant and a phone store. Its entrance was a narrow door between the two, with a staircase behind it.

The map pin was in the right place. Groups still phoned from the sidewalk to ask where the door was, and some walked into the restaurant instead.

The listing's photos were the logo, a microphone on a table, and a dozen customer pictures taken with flash in dark rooms.

The owner added an evening photo from across the street with the sign lit, a close shot of the door showing the name and hours, the stairway, the front desk, and each private room with the lights up.

None of it was artistic. Each photo answered something people had been phoning from the sidewalk to ask.

Adding them to the listing

In Google My Business, photos can be added under categories that include exterior and interior. Use them, so the photos land where people look for them.

You can choose a profile photo and a cover photo, but Google decides which image appears first in search results, and it may pick a customer's instead.

That is a reason to add enough good photos that whatever Google picks is useful.

Afterwards, check the listing on your own phone, both in the maps app and in a search for your business name, since that is how customers see it.

Customer photos and old photos

Customers add their own photos, and some will be blurry, dark or of the wrong place. You can report photos that are not of your business, but you cannot delete one just because it is unflattering.

The better answer is more good photos of your own, added steadily, so the poor ones sink.

Old photos do quiet harm: the storefront before the new sign, the room before the renovation, a door you no longer use. Delete your own outdated photos the week anything changes.

The same photo on your website

The entrance photo belongs on your contact page too, beside the address and above any map.

Add one sentence of directions: "The entrance is the green door left of the restaurant, up one flight of stairs."

A photo with a sentence is easy to forward to a group, and it works when the map app does not.

The counter-case

For a business customers never visit, such as a contractor who works at people's homes, entrance photos matter little. Photos of finished work and of the team do that job.

A shop on a main street with a large sign and a glass front is easy to find, and one good street photo may be enough. The interior still counts.

And a business run from a home office should think carefully before photographing its front door at all.

For everyone with a door customers walk through: the street, the entrance and the room, kept current.

An hour with a phone

1. Look at your listing on a phone, as a stranger.
2. Photograph the building from where customers arrive.
3. Photograph the entrance close enough to read.
4. Shoot the inside with every light on.
5. Upload each one under the right category.
6. Delete your own outdated photos.
7. Add the entrance photo to your contact page.

Step three is the photo that does the most work. A map gets people to the building; only a photo of the door gets them inside.

The same address problem on another platform is covered in check-ins and the address on your Facebook page.

Frequently asked questions

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