Introduction

Welcome to the Winter 2024 Release Notes, we hope you had a great start to the new year! We’ve been busy wrapping up the new innovations and improvements to the Uberall platform that we are excited to share with you! This release is packed with a new AI Assistant, all-new reporting dashboards, usability enhancements and so much more! We encourage you to check them out below! 

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AI Innovations

AI Post Assistant

Continuing our AI innovation, we have a new assistant that is ready to help! The Post Assistant is here to help customers craft the perfect social post! In the Social Publisher, users can now click on the Post Assistant and use AI to adjust the tone of the post’s message. They can simply enter what they want to say, activate the Post Assistant, and then pick a style that best suits their post; professional, inspirational, casual, fun, or helpful. The Post Assistant will show them how the post copy will look in each style! Clients can always modify the recommendation or choose to leave it as is.

Listing Innovations

Google Videos

Publishing videos to Google Business Profiles (GBP) is now supported in the Uberall platform! Users can upload videos directly to Uberall which will be published to their respective GBP galleries. With Google becoming visual first in search, this is a great way to enhance customers' profiles to boost search visibility, drive more consumer engagement and conversion. Encourage clients to upload a short 30 second maximum video in the Photos & Videos tab or use the Bulk Editor feature to publish a video to multiple locations! 

Locator & Local Pages Innovations & Enhancements

Store Locator Analytics

In this release, we are introducing a new reporting dashboard to the Uberall platform that enables you to track the performance and ROI of your Store Locator! The new Store Locator Analytics offers users a simplified way to understand key metrics such as views, unique clicks, and conversion metrics without needing to use complex tools such as Google Analytics! 

Data in the dashboard can be easily filtered by account and locations to find the right performance data and see the value that your local pages are driving.

Image Optimization

A small but mighty enhancement! Uberall will automatically optimize images on Local Pages to ensure that they are in a preferred format (webp, avif), responsive for varying screen sizes and smaller in file size. The optimized images will improve page load speed and have a significant impact on Web Core Vitals (Google’s metrics and grading system for your webpages) and overall search performance. 

Generate Reviews, Menu Orders, or Web Lead Form

QR Code - Generate Reviews

We are introducing an easy way for clients to generate review QR codes for all locations! The QR codes make for an easy way to ask customers for reviews. The Uberall platform makes the process simple by allowing users to generate a downloadable zip file with all the QR codes for your selected locations. 

Platform Innovations

Revamped Navigation

We have an exciting new enhancement to the Uberall platform navigation. We’re introducing a new ultra-sleek navigation bar that simplifies the platform experience and streamlines it across all user types! New product naming conventions and feature grouping that we feel makes more sense to the user experience are available, making it easier to find what you are looking for.

One of the bigger changes comes to those who are managing one location. Previously, all the navigation was at the top of the platform. The main navigation will now be on the left side of the platform consolidating the experience across all user types. 

Improved Webhooks

In this update, users will now be able to manage webhooks directly within the platform! Webhooks are used to send real-time communications from the Uberall platform to any other application. Adding the capability to the platform makes it easy for users to make adjustments to the communication events that they subscribe to, whether it’s listing, location or business events. The option to add new webhooks will be available in the Settings section of the platform. Users can add, modify, delete, and see details regarding the webhooks they created. 

Publish UI & Usability Enhancements

Instagram Stories

With this release we have expanded the Instagram post types available in the Social Publisher! Customers can now create Instagram Stories right from the Uberall platform. Instagram Stories are a great way to build awareness and increase engagement, Uberall’s Social Publisher streamlines the process of creating content for all of your Instagram accounts and now with more post types than ever! Start by choosing Instagram as your social channel in the publisher, choose your Instagram accounts and then select “Stories” as the post-type. 

Social Template - UI and Usability Enhancements

There are a number of enhancements added to the Asset Library to improve the overall experience! Templates will now retain the selected social channel (e.g., Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) when saved in the Asset Library. Saving the channel makes it easier for end users to identify which of their social profiles the template is optimized for removing any guess work and simplifying the process of publishing new content! 

Reviews Enhancements

Unified Inbox - Performance Upgrades

While this upgrade is happening in the background, it’s a vital upgrade that improves the performance and experience for those using the Unified Inbox. We’ve addressed the issues that impacted load times, delays in delivering content, as well as a few bugs to make for a huge quality of life upgrade. We hope your clients will notice the difference!

Location Data Management

Transaction URLs

We are introducing a new dedicated section for managing transaction URLs for location profiles! Previously, these were all managed via the attributes section; however we are making changes necessary to stay up to date with Google and offer a simpler way of maintaining the information. 

Transaction URLs are those found on your Google Business Profiles and vary depending on the category selected for your business. 

• Restaurants will have ordering and reservation URLs.
• Services will have appointment bookings URLs.
• Retailers will have shopping URLs.

The new Transaction URL fields can be easily managed via the location profile, Bulk Editor, spreadsheet upload, and via API.

Important Note: The Google Business Profile experience for Food & Drink businesses will vary depending on the country. US, UK, DE, CA, AU, and JP will all have the button experience at the top of the profile. All other place action types and countries will display as a line in the merchant's Google Business Profile.

 

Media Management

Custom Order Brands

In this update, we are making it easier to manage the list order of brands sold at your locations. Adding brand names to local pages is a great way to drive more conversion and interest in the business. To help businesses promote the brands they offer, we are adding an option to modify the order in which brands are listed so that users can highlight particular brands first to get more customers in the door. The brand list can be modified via spreadsheet upload or API.

Messages Innovations & Enhancements

Web Contact Form

We are expanding the capabilities of the Messages product. With this latest addition, users will be able to create a contact form that can be used to ingest contact requests. The new contact requests can easily be managed within the Uberall platform making it easy for users to view and adjust the status of the contact request. 

The Contact Forms are easily built within the Uberall platform as well! The streamlined builder walks through decisions that are required for the contact form such as account selection, branding, form fields and more. Once the form is built, a code snippet becomes available for businesses to apply to their website pages wherever they would like the contact form to be available. 

Live Agent Availability

This new feature allows businesses to set the working hours when a live person is available to take on conversations with customers. The Live Agent Availability management will be available when select “customize” on your messages setup. In the new flow, users can define the working hours and customize automated messages that are delivered for when agents are offline!

Message Connectivity Issues UI Enhancements

For this release, we have made it easier to distinguish connectivity issues with the channels used to setup Messages in the Uberall platform. This means that if there are any connection issues with Google or Facebook, you can easily identify what the problem is so you can troubleshoot it. 

Near Me 360 Widget Enhancements

We have made significant improvements to the Near Me 360 widget this release! The Near Me 360 widget can be enabled onto your website so that your prospect can analyze the success of their locations in search performance. This release provides a more accurate picture of a business’s online presence, especially for Service Area Businesses as they can now input their phone number into the form.

Additional improvements to the Local Presence Check include:
The ability to customize the report name for your website and the privacy policy link.
Optimizations to the performance and experience when searching results.
Messaging improvements to the results page including messaging in the results breakdown and clearly noting at the top of the page when a listing is already ‘managed’ within the platform.  
Added the functionality to download the report as a PDF. 
Inclusion of lead capture fields to collect a phone number and email address.

You can learn more about how to implement the Near Me 360 widget using this article. 

Take me to my Uberall 🚀