Having a physical store gives you a competitive advantage over stores that sell purely online by simplifying some of the complexities of e-commerce. Shopper’s can find products in-store, pick them up directly from your store instead of waiting for home delivery, and return products to the store instead of having to mail them back.
However, the advantages of having a physical store can be negated if customers have trouble finding that store.
Isn’t Google Maps enough?
- Users still turn to your store website to confirm your operating hours and find out whether you close on holidays. And if they’re already on your website when they need to locate your store, their next logical step is opening your store locator rather than going on Google Maps.
- If you don’t have an easily accessible store locator, your visitors will need to step out of your site and open Google Maps. Every time a customer leaves your site to find information elsewhere, the chances of them returning reduce drastically. They might get hijacked by a competitor or get sucked in by one of the many distractions on the internet. You go to search for one thing on Google and three hours later you find yourself on YouTube watching a video compilation of cats roaring like tigers.
I recommend
- Putting the link in the header and footer
- Adding an in-store filter in the category pages (product listings) – see best practice #181
- Adding a link on the product page to check for availability in store – see best practice #205