Research is the first step of the customer’s journey and we all know that a vaste majority of consumers are going on online (proximity, opening hours, reviews, directions, etc.) before deciding where to. A Store locator is a module for your website, it enables consumers to locate your physical stores and guarantees a good visibility in local search results.
47% of consumers use the company’s website
By analysing a little more, we found out that among the used sources by consumers, 47% use the company’s website whereas 77% prefer external sources *, (source: consumerbarometer.com), the most commonly known being Google. It is thus key for a business to be visible from both sides.
*(24% of the consumers use both)
How to increase the visibility of your points of sale in local search results?
Actually, the Store Locator is a combination of two types of webpages :
- A Global search page (a map with an overview of your points of sale and several functionalities like filters for example)
- A Point of sale page, a unique digital shop front
To improve the stores visibility on the local internet. So it’s important to realise that both these pages have to be optimised for SEO purposes.
The first thing to do to optimise your Store Locator is to make sure that every point of sale has its own store page. The fact that all your stores will have a specific page will already influence your local SEO authority. Another thing to do is to ensure that all the details displayed on the point of sale page are correct (address, opening hours, directions, etc.). You should also make sure to publish your in- and outgoing links from your website and external pages (Google, Facebook, directory, etc.)
Regularly post content will also give you some lead, while stimulating the consumer’s interest.
Finally, by technical work we mean, Store Locator code optimisation : Keyword integration, mobile responsiveness, use of Google’s tag,…, etc.).
All of these changes will boost the visibility of your points of sale in local search results and will have a positive impact on users satisfaction during their online research.
What if you could multiply by 10 your points of sale efficacy, by combining your Store Locator with “Multi-diffusion”?
