What about online stores?

If you distribute your products to both brick-and-mortar and online retailers, you may be wondering how to promote your online retail partners that don't have physical storefronts to customers looking at your store locator.

Add a new section to your page

We suggest that you show your online retailers on the same page as your store locator, but not within it. For example, you could add a section above or below your store locator with a listing of your online stores and a general idea of the countries/regions they ship to. This makes it easy for visitors to identify which stores are online-only.

If you're using Shopify and your theme supports Shopify's Online Store 2.0, you can set up a new page template that includes your Stockist map, and then add an additional text block above or below the map to feature your online retailers. Alternatively, if your theme doesn't support Online Store 2.0, you can add additional text to the standard Shopify Page content with the steps in this article under "Adding content above/below the map".

If you have a ton of online stores, you may want to consider adding a separate page to list them, then linking to that page from your store locator page.

Why not on my store locator?

We discourage adding online stores alongside brick-and-mortar retailers inside your Stockist account. The concept of a "store locator" page is now common across the web (just check the website of any large chain retailer in your area) and customers expect that the locations identified on the map are places they can actually visit. 

Adding online stores to your locator is at best a recipe for confusion, and in the worst case could result in an upset customer who travels to visit a store location that didn't exist or wasn't open to the public.

Workaround for adding online stores

If you feel you have a special case and really want to show your online stores in the locator, there's a way to do so.

This is discouraged -- please see the section above for why.

Normally, if you try to add a store without an address, you'll be asked to enter an address before saving the store. In reality, only the map pin is required, and the address fields can be left blank. To add a store without an address, the steps are:

  1. On the Add new location page, enter the relevant store details (name, website, etc.)
  2. In the address fields, enter the city or country where the online store is based
  3. Click Find address on map to drop a pin on the map
  4. Clear the address fields you entered in step 2
  5. Save the store

After following the steps above, you'll have a store that appears on your locator without an address.

Note: Even without an address, stores still follow the standard behavior for searching. Specifically, the store will only appear in search results if its map pin is close enough to the area the visitor is searching.

If you run into trouble, please feel free to send us a support request and we're happy to assist.