A Store Finder does what it says on the tin - allows customers to find the location of your physical stores on your website. Whether you’re a retailer, restaurant chain, service provider, travel and hospitality business or educational establishment, having a tool that allows customers or visitors to effortlessly find your physical locations or pick-up points is invaluable, saving them time and enhancing their overall experience. 

 

How Does A Store Finder Work? 

In principle, a Store Finder tool works by allowing you to combine precise location information for your organisation's stores and a customer's location, determining the relationship between the two sets of information, before presenting the results in a visual fashion.

The key elements that you need in order to make a Store Finder work are:

• A list of locations (generally referring to your stores, but this could be any other locations relevant to your business and your customers such as collection points or drop-off lockers)
• Additional (optional) useful information about each location
• Your customer's current location
• A method for identifying which of your locations are closest to your customer - calculated using either distance or time metrics, depending on what your customer wants
• A method of visually presenting this information, and allowing the customer to select specific locations and see relevant information about each one

Benefits of Using Loqate's Store Finder

Our flexible APIs let you upload precise store coordinates or addresses that can be geocoded. You can even go one step further by adding bespoke details like opening hours and accessibility information.

Other key features of our Store Finder include: 

• Geocoding – with our global location data, you have access to premise-level geo-coordinates in 130 countries worldwide, including point-level (rooftop) geocoding in 60 countries and city centre positions for over 245 countries. 
• Distances – Our distance finder endpoint globally calculates road-based distances, even across borders, providing travel times by car, cycling and walking and can accommodate up to 1000 locations per request.
• Mapping – by utilising our own mapping tile server, we can visually represent the results of a store search, allowing users to zoom in on locations selected from a list. Plus, there are options to customise the pins displayed.
• Locations upload – Our platform provides two primary methods for managing location data. If you have static lists or only need occasional edits, the UI allows you to upload and make modifications as required. For users making frequent updates you can use our API which offers greater flexibility through automation.

Learn more: Everything you need to know about our Store Finder