In the modern era, customers find websites before physical locations. Yet, many purchases are made at a local brick-and-mortar place. Whether your company is a chain, or you distribute to many different stores, your website can help connect customers to your products in person with a map of store locations.
Save your customers from opening yet another tab or picking up the phone. You can provide them with an easy-to-use, searchable map right on your website:
View Apple Store Locator in a full screen map
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do using our mapping tool to create a store locator.
Add Your Store Locations to a Spreadsheet
The first step of creating a store locator is to create a spreadsheet of your store or business locations. You might have even already compiled this information elsewhere, though you’ll want to make some adjustments when you transfer it into Excel, Google Sheets, or any other spreadsheet tool.
Ensure that each piece of data is in its own column, including:
- Address
- City
- State
- Zip code
- Store Name
- Phone Number
If you have many locations to map, that’s fine. You can add up to 25,000 locations per map with BatchGeo Pro.
Now let’s see how to display your store locations on a customizable map.
Copy and Paste Your Store Data to Make a Map
With your locations added to a spreadsheet, the next step in creating a store locator is to copy and paste your data into our tool.
To do so:
- Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data from the spreadsheet
- Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
- Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
- Click “Map Your Data” and watch as the geocoder turns your store addresses into coordinates
You can check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Set Options.” There are several customizations you can opt to make under “Show Advanced Options,” including map style, marker colors, shape, and more.
Once you’re satisfied, click “Save & Continue,” though you can always make edits later.
Go ahead and give your map a Title along with an optional description on the following page. Add your email if you don’t already have an account so that you’re able to come back to your map in the future. You’ll also want to set your privacy/share settings to Public, which will allow anyone to see your map.
Finally, perhaps the most important part: select “Store Locator” as your “Map Mode.”
View Apple Store Locator in a full screen map
Hit “Save Map,” and there you have it! The map displays all of your location information, phone numbers, and names of the stores. With your map complete, let’s finally see how we can add it to your business website.
Embed Your Store Locator Map on Your Website
So far, we’ve created a spreadsheet of your locations and turned it into a store locator map. Now, we’ll show you how you can add the same store locator map to your website.
Now, you could just copy the link of your map and paste it straight to your website, but we’re gonna take this one step further and embed it.
Right-click your store locator map and select “Edit Map.” Scroll down until you spot “Embed Code.” Copy the code and paste it into your website editor. For example, if you’re using WordPress, choose a “Custom HTML” block and paste it there.
More than just embedding it onto your website, you can also make it possible for users of your map to search for the location of your store that is closest to them with an additional setting.
Enable Users’ Ability to Search for Their Nearest Location
On the same “Edit Map” page as we previously described, scroll down to the “Locator” setting and enable it. When enabled, this will show a search bar on your map, which can be used to filter results and find the nearest to a given location.
Users of your map will be able to type in their location (such as New York City) and the map will automatically pull up which of your stores are closest to them.
Make your own store locator and display it on your website for free at batchgeo.com.
