Lightspeed Partners With Google To Boost Bottom Line For Local Merchants

Omnichannel commerce platform Lightspeed is teaming up with Google to help local merchants boost revenues as the world reopens post-pandemic. 

Lightspeed is now integrating Google tools to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) around the globe reopen and welcome people back into their establishments. The goal is to facilitate the move to foot traffic by providing retailers with no-cost tools available on the Lightspeed platform.

“We know that so much of business today starts with a Google search,” Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva said in a press release. “By combining forces, Lightspeed and Google are eliminating the pain points that prevent SMBs from effectively promoting their products online to the communities who prefer to shop local, providing them a springboard to simplify and scale their businesses as they prepare for the welcomed return of in-store shopping.”

Google data indicates that although people are eager to return to brick-and-mortar stores in their community, they often start their shopping journey online. By way of example, searches for local businesses escalated over 80 percent year over year. Further, searches for “who has” and “in stock” have grown by more than 8,000 percent year over year.

The partnership between the two companies will integrate Google Local Inventory Ads, Google Smart Shopping Campaigns and Google My Business, according to the release. The move is anticipated to streamline a multichannel approach for omnichannel merchants.

“Small and medium-sized businesses have been hit the hardest during the pandemic, but globally we’ve seen a rallying cry to support them,” Sabrina Geremia, VP and country director, Google Canada, said in the release. “Customers are shopping both online and in-store and expect a seamless shopping experience between both.”

Last month, Lightspeed acquired the retail management software firm Vend for roughly $350 million. The tie-up is intended to help Lightspeed expand its presence in the Asia Pacific area.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said last month that the surge in shopping has helped boost its first-quarter revenues. To that end, Google rolled out a suite of tools to help retailers grow.

Google announced in February that it was launching an initiative to help businesses worldwide recover from the pandemic. The Silicon Valley search giant teamed with the European Investment Fund and two other organizations in Latin America and Asia to offer $75 million in funding to SMBs.