Skyward Digital
Skyward Digital Google Business Profile setup
For any New Zealand business with a patch to cover $395, one off, GST included

You have a shop window on Google. Nobody has dressed it.

Search your own trade and your own suburb on your phone. The result that decides it is the map — a pin, a name, a star line, a strip of photographs and two buttons. For most businesses that window was assembled by Google out of whatever it could find, and nobody has ever sat down and filled it in properly. That is one day of work, once, and it belongs to you at the end of it.

Get mine sorted — $395 What the day involves
What it costs$395, GST in
Website neededNone
How longOne working day
Who does itJosh, on 022 584 0585
01 / THE SCREEN

Eleven things come
before the blue link
to your website.

Here is a phone held by somebody who has just typed your trade and their suburb into it, read from the top down in the order they meet it. Around two thirds of searches like this one end without anybody clicking through to a website at all — so most of what follows is the sale, and the website is what happens after it.

  1. Top of screen

    Two or three results somebody has paid for

    There is nothing on this page you can do about those, and no amount of anything makes them go away. Most people scroll straight past. What they cost you is the first few centimetres of a screen the size of a coaster, and they set the price expectation before your name has appeared.

  2. The three

    A map, and exactly three businesses underneath it

    Three slots, and then a button that says more places, which almost nobody presses. Who gets the three is decided largely by how close you are to the person holding the phone, how well what you have written matches what they typed, and how well known you are. The distance is not yours to change. The other two are ordinary work that most businesses have never done.

  3. The line

    Your name, a rating, and a number in brackets

    Four words and two numbers, sitting immediately above two competitors' four words and two numbers. If the bracket says nothing, or the rating is three point something with one furious review sitting on top of it, that comparison has already happened. It happens before a single sentence you wrote gets read.

  4. Underneath

    A category, a suburb, and the word open or closed

    The category is one line and it decides which searches you turn up in at all. It is usually the one somebody picked in thirty seconds from a list of several thousand, years ago, and never looked at again. The hours beneath it are taken completely literally: a listing that says closed does not get rung, even on a day you would have answered.

  5. The strip

    Photographs, and most of them are not yours

    If nobody has added any, the space gets filled with what is available — a street view of the front of a building, or a customer's phone photo of something you would rather they had not photographed. For a great many of these people that is the only picture of your work they will ever see, and it is the one thing on the screen you can change this afternoon.

  6. Two buttons

    Call, and Directions

    Both of them go around your website entirely. For a lot of trades this is where the enquiry actually arrives, which is why the number on the listing has to be the phone in your pocket rather than a landline in a shed, and why a wrong address is not a tidiness problem — it is somebody driving to the wrong street and giving up.

  7. Lower down

    Reviews, questions, and edits suggested by strangers

    The questions section is public and anyone at all can answer it, including somebody guessing and somebody who would like the job instead of you. The same goes for suggestions about your hours and your address. Most owners have never been told either of those exists, let alone that they can get in first.

  8. Eleventh

    A blue link to your website

    By the time it appears the reader already has your name, your rating, your photographs, your hours, your address and your phone number. The link is for the ones who want to read before they ring, and they are worth having — they are the ones who turn up already believing you. But they are a minority, and everything above has decided whether they bother.

  9. Or not you

    Three other businesses, and a call you never hear about

    Nothing rings. Nothing bounces back. There is no record anywhere of the person who typed it in, looked at three listings and picked one of the other two, and no version of this where anybody tells you it happened. It is the quietest way there is to lose work, and it is the one thing on this page that a day of tidying up genuinely fixes.

02 / THE DAY

One hour of yours.
Then a day of ours.
Then it is done.

The whole job, in the order it happens. None of it needs you to sit at a computer, and the only thing that ever holds it up is working out which email address the listing was first claimed on — which is why that is step one rather than step four.

01
Before anything

Finding what is already out there

Your partNothing yet

We look up every listing carrying your name, your address or your number before we ring you, because there is usually more than one. Some were created by Google rather than by anybody at your business. Some were claimed years ago by a marketing outfit, a former partner, or you, on an email that no longer opens. Duplicates matter more than they sound: they split your reviews between two windows and neither one looks busy.

02
The hour

A conversation, on the phone or at a table

Your partOne hour, once

What you do, what you would like more of, what you would rather never do again, where you will and will not drive, and what you charge to turn up. Auckland businesses can have this in person if it is easier; everywhere else it is a phone call. It is not a briefing form and there is nothing to fill in beforehand. Talking for an hour about your own trade is a thing you already know how to do.

03
Ours

Claiming it, verifying it, and closing the strays

Your partRead one code to us

The real listing gets claimed and verified in your name, and the duplicates get merged or removed. Verification is Google's process rather than ours, so it can be a postcard, a video, or nothing at all depending on what it decides to ask for — we handle the process and tell you plainly if it is one of the slow ones. The listing is registered to you. We go on as a manager, and come off the day you ask.

04
Ours

Filling in the nine things that are usually blank

Your partAnswer two or three questions by text

Categories, services, areas, hours and public holidays, the description, the photographs, the questions people ask, and the review link. Each of those is a field with a right answer and a wrong one, and the homepage sets out exactly what we do to each of them and what usually goes wrong. The nine fields, one at a time.

05
Yours

Twenty minutes with the camera you already have

Your partTwenty minutes, whenever

The one part nobody can do for you, and the part that changes the window most. The van. The team. A job before and the same job after. Where people park. You take them on your phone, badly, in daylight, and send them through — we do the rest. We will leave you a short list of what else is worth photographing over the next few months and when adding one takes ninety seconds.

06
The end of it

A handover, in writing, that assumes nothing

Your partKeep the email

One page: what the listing now says, which email it lives on, how to change your hours before Christmas, the link that opens straight on the review box so you can send it from the ute while you are still parked outside, and what to do if Google emails you about something. Written for somebody who does not want to become good at this. There is nothing ongoing to pay and nothing to cancel.

If it turns out you already have a listing that is claimed, verified and largely right, we will say so on the phone and you will not be charged $395 to confirm it. That has to be worth more to us than one invoice.

03 / AFTER THE DAY

A listing is not
a thing you finish.
It is a thing that drifts.

Six ways a profile goes wrong once it is right, none of which will ever be announced to you. They are all small, they are all fixable in a few minutes, and the reason to know about them is that the first four can happen without you touching anything.

Suggested edits

A stranger changes your hours

Anybody can propose a change to your address, your hours or whether you have closed down, and some of those go live before you hear about it. Most are honest mistakes by people who meant well. You want to be the person who notices within a week rather than the one who notices in March.

Duplicates

A second listing appears from nowhere

Directories and data aggregators feed information into the map, and an old address or a slightly different spelling of your name can turn into a second window with none of your reviews on it. Two half listings look worse to a stranger than one good one, and they compete with each other.

Verification

Google asks you to prove it again

It happens after a change of address, a change of category, and sometimes for no visible reason at all. The email is vague, it looks exactly like the phishing version of itself, and ignoring it is how a working listing quietly stops appearing. If it lands and we set the thing up, forward it and we will tell you which it is.

The questions

Somebody else answers for you

The questions section stays open forever, and the answer with the most votes sits at the top whether or not it came from your business. Getting your own answers up first is not a trick — it is the only way the answer on your own listing is one you would have given.

The photographs

The newest one is from two years ago

The van has been resprayed, somebody has left, somebody has started, and the most recent job on there is from the winter before last. Nothing breaks. It just reads, next to a competitor who posts one a month, as a business that has stopped paying attention.

Reviews with no reply

The good ones as much as the bad

An unanswered wall of reviews reads as an unattended business, and an unanswered bad one reads as agreement. A short, unbothered reply within a day or two is worth more than the review it is under, because the next reader is judging how you behave rather than what happened to somebody else.

Checking all six takes about ten minutes a month, and the handover tells you how. If you would rather not, a monthly tune-up of the profile is part of the care plan we run for website clients at $169 a month — but the profile is yours and it works whether or not you ever take that. What the care plan covers.

04 / REVIEWS

The one part of this
we cannot build,
and will not fake.

Every survey of why people do not ring a local business lands in the same place: something about the reviews — too few of them, too old, or badly answered — is the most common reason given, and it comes in ahead of price. It is also the only thing on your listing that a stranger knows you did not write yourself, which is exactly why it carries the weight it does.

What we do

Make asking take ten seconds

A short link that opens straight on the review box rather than on your listing, saved where you will actually find it. A message you can send from the ute while you are still parked outside, in your words rather than ours. And one plain rule about when to send it, because the honest answer is the moment the customer is happiest, which is almost never the moment the invoice goes out.

What we will not do

Write one, buy one, or hide one

We will not write a review for you, we will not buy them, we will not set up anything that quietly filters the unhappy customers out before they reach the box, and we will not put a rating in the code of a website that is not shown on the page. All four of those are against Google's published rules and all four are the kind of thing that gets a listing pulled. More to the point, they would make everything else on the listing worth less.

The bad one

Answer it, in public, and quickly

You will get one eventually, and often from the job you remember as the one where you went furthest out of your way. The reply is not for the person who wrote it. It is for the next fifty people, who are reading it to find out what you are like when something goes wrong — so short, specific, no argument, and an offer to sort it out. A business with forty good reviews and one calmly answered bad one reads better than one with forty and nothing else.

Us

We have none either, and we are not pretending otherwise

Skyward is new. There is no client list on this website, no testimonials and no logos, because we have not earned any yet and inventing them is the one thing that would make everything else here untrue. The first ten clients get $500 off in exchange for an honest review, a testimonial and permission to publish the build — a trade rather than a discount, and it is the same problem you have, solved the only way it can be.

05 / IF A WEBSITE EVER FOLLOWS

The $395 is not
a way in. It is
a finished job.

Plenty of businesses should stop at the profile, and if yours is one of them we would rather say so and take the $395 than sell you something that sits there. But the setup is also the first thing we would do for a website client anyway, so if a site does follow, that work is already behind you rather than done twice. These are the prices, and they are the same ones everybody else on this site is quoted.

Google Business Profile setup

This page. Standalone, no website needed, done in a day. Claimed, verified, categorised, filled in, photographed and handed over, with the review link set up so asking is one tap the day a job finishes.

$395one-off

Essential — up to four pages

Home, what you do, who you are, and how to reach you. The right size when the profile is doing the finding and the website only has to be somewhere credible for a name to land at nine at night.

$2,450founding price $1,950

Standard — up to eight pages

A page for each service, which is the tier most businesses should take. It is also what makes the services on your listing worth having, because each one can point at a page that answers it properly.

$3,450founding price $2,950

Lead Engine — services and suburbs

Everything in Standard, plus a page for each area worth having, a local search campaign, the after-hours enquiry assistant for twelve months and three months of the care plan.

$5,950founding price $5,450

Care plan

Hosting, updates, backups, security, the small changes you ring up about, and a monthly tune-up of the Google profile — photos, hours, services and a hand asking for reviews. No lock-in, and you still own everything.

$169per month, or $1,690 a year

Every figure on this page includes GST and nothing is added at the end. The founding price is $500 off, for the first ten clients, in exchange for three things written into the job: an honest Google review, a testimonial we can use, and permission to publish the build as a case study. It is a trade rather than a discount, and there is nothing below it. Full pricing and what is in each tier.

06 / STRAIGHT UP

What $395
does not buy.

Not a position on the map. Nobody can sell you one. Where you appear depends partly on where the searcher is standing, which is nobody's to hand out, and partly on a system that is not published and changes. Anyone quoting you a place in the three is guessing with your money, and if they are prepared to guarantee that they will be prepared to guarantee other things too.

Not more calls, by any number. We have no way of knowing what your phone does next and no honest basis for a figure, so there is not one anywhere on this page. What we can tell you is what will be true at the end of the day: the listing will be claimed, verified, correct, complete, photographed and yours, which is the part anybody can actually control.

Not reviews. See section 04. We make asking easy and we will not do anything beyond that.

Not a lock-in. There is nothing ongoing, nothing to cancel and no account with us to keep. If you never speak to us again the profile carries on working, because it was registered to you rather than to us and we come off it the day you say so.

And not experience we have not had. Skyward is new and has no clients yet. What is on this page is how the search result is built and what the fields do, which you can check on your own phone while you read it — not a record we do not have.

07 / QUESTIONS

The six we get
asked about this,
answered properly.

I think I already have one. How do I tell?

Search your business name on your phone. If a panel comes up on the right, or a card at the top with a map on it, something exists. Whether it is claimed is a different question — if it says Own this business? anywhere on it, then no, and until somebody claims it the public can edit it.

Send us the name and the suburb and we will look before you commit to anything. If it turns out yours is already claimed, verified and largely right, we will tell you that and there will be nothing to pay.

Someone set mine up years ago and I cannot get into it.

Common, and usually fixable. It is often an old marketing company, a former business partner, or an email address at a domain that lapsed. Google has a process for requesting access from whoever holds it, and if they do not respond within a set period ownership can transfer.

It is the one part of this that runs on somebody else's clock, so it can take a fortnight rather than a day. We start it on day one for exactly that reason, and everything else carries on while it runs.

Do you need my Google password?

No, and you should not give it to anybody who asks. Profiles have their own manager access: you send an invitation to our email address from inside your own account, we do the work, and you remove us with two taps whenever you like.

Same principle as everything else here. It is registered to you, the logins are yours on day one, and nothing we do makes you dependent on us to keep it.

I work out of a van. I do not have a shop for people to visit.

That is most of the businesses this is built for, and Google has a setting for it. You list the areas you cover instead of an address, and your home address stays hidden. What you must not do is invent an address you do not operate from — that is the fastest way to have a listing suspended, and it is not worth the risk for a suburb you were going to cover anyway.

What if I genuinely do not want a website?

Then do not have one. The profile is a finished thing on its own, and around half of New Zealand businesses have no site at all — plenty of them are busy. You will have a phone number, directions, hours, photographs and somewhere for reviews to collect, and that is a working shop window.

Come back if and when a website starts being the thing that is missing. We will not chase you about it.

Is it $395, or $395 plus GST?

$395, full stop. Every figure on this site includes GST and nothing is added later. It is worth asking every other quote you get the same question — at 15% the difference is not a rounding error, and a quote that does not say which it means cannot be compared with one that does.

ALSO WRITTEN

If you do want
a website, we have
written yours down.

A page per trade, and a different argument on each — because these jobs are not bought the same way, and a set of pages that pretended otherwise would be worth less than one honest page.

Plumbers

Forty seconds, in a hallway, with a bucket under it.

A burst pipe is bought in a panic, and the decision is over before most websites have finished loading. What that does to a shortlist, and the eight pages that answer it.

 Electricians

A week of comparing, and a Saturday that ends it.

A switchboard is not a panic. It is shortlisted on Sunday, priced against two others and slept on — and it goes to whoever replied while the customer still cared.

 Builders

Six months of being ruled out, mostly in silence.

Nobody picks a builder. They cut a list of twelve down to three, and the cut that matters happens in April with nobody on the phone and no reason ever given.

 Roofers

Three quotes, thousands apart, and no way to tell why.

Nobody has ever stood on the roof they paid for, so they check the roofer instead — and the real competition is another winter of doing nothing.

 Painters

Judged on the day, by somebody who cannot tell.

On the day it finishes, a careful job and a quick one look the same, and nobody ever goes back to tell the painter which one they bought. What that does to a quote, and the pages that answer it.
08 / START

Send us the name
and the suburb.
We will look first.

Before anybody pays anything, we will find whatever is already out there under your name and tell you what state it is in — claimed or not, verified or not, duplicated or not. If it is already sorted we will say so and there is nothing to pay. If it is not, that is the $395 and it is done inside a day of you saying go.

Phone or text022 584 0585 Emailjosh@skywarddigital.co.nz Everything elseThe homepage sets it all out

Josh reads these himself. Nothing is passed to a salesperson, because there is not one. If it will not wait, ring instead.

We use these details only to reply to your enquiry and, if you go ahead, to run the job. We don't sell them, we don't add you to a mailing list, and you can ask us to delete them any time by emailing Josh. No spam, no obligation, no sales sequence. The full privacy statement says who else handles them and for how long.