By Juliet Umeh

Nigerian retailers preparing for Black Friday may lose ready-to-buy customers if their Google listings carry outdated opening hours, unanswered phone numbers or old product photographs.

Google’s Director for East and West Africa, Olumide Balogun, gave the warning as Nigeria prepare for Black Friday and December festive shopping season.

Black Friday falls on 27 November, and Detty December follows right behind it. Together they are the busiest selling weeks of the Nigerian year.

Balogun said businesses should check that customers can find accurate information about their shops before spending more to attract them through adverts.

He said: “Many Nigerian shoppers find a product on Instagram or TikTok, then check Google to see if the shop is real, the price is right and the address is close,”

“If your listing shows old opening hours or a phone number nobody answers, you lose a buyer who had already made up her mind.”

In advice issued after Google’s announcements at the DMEXCO marketing conference in Cologne, Balogun urged retailers to update their Google Business Profiles, confirm their phone numbers; add recent photographs of available stock and respond to customer reviews.

He said businesses should also include their Black Friday opening hours.

Beyond correcting their listings, Balogun advised businesses running Search adverts to prepare for the way customers now look for products. Shoppers, he said, increasingly ask detailed questions or search using their voices and photographs, making it difficult for advertisers to anticipate every query with a fixed keyword list.

He recommended enabling AI Max in Search campaigns to help adverts appear for relevant questions businesses may not have listed. Citing Google’s figures, he said businesses using the feature recorded 27 per cent more conversions at about the same cost, and advised advertisers to allow two weeks before judging its performance.

Balogun also urged retailers to measure completed orders, WhatsApp enquiries and phone calls, rather than treating clicks as proof that an advert is working.

“Clicks alone do not pay salaries,” he said.

He advised sellers to use clear product descriptions that include details such as size, colour and material, and to test different adverts made from their existing product photographs.

According to Balogun, these steps can help businesses use their current budgets more effectively.