Using Search Filters

Search Filters in Stockist allow visitors to find locations on your store locator based on type, features, category, products carried, or any other characteristic.

Search filter basics

A search filter is a "yes" or "no" attribute that's shared by some (or all) of the locations on your map. Stockist supports creating an unlimited number of filters in your account, and you can apply as many filters as needed to each individual location.
Some common uses for filters are:
  • Organizing stores by individual products carried (e.g. "Shampoo", "Body Wash", and "Curling Iron")
  • Organizing stores by product lines (e.g. "Bath Products" and "Fragrances")
  • Organizing stores based on store features (e.g. "Custom Fitting Services" or "Appointments Available")
  • Organizing stores based on type (e.g. "Distributor" or "Retailer")

How search filters appear

Search filters will normally appear as checkboxes underneath the search bar. Visitors can select these checkboxes to narrow their search to only show stores matching one or more filters:

Additionally, each store listing will display the associated filters for that store:

If you’d prefer to hide a filter from one or both of these places, you can change these settings when creating or editing a filter.

Common tasks

Create a filter

To create a filter in your account, open the Settings > Search Filters page of the Stockist dashboard, then click Add search filter and fill out the form that appears:

In the Name field, enter the filter name that will appear to visitors. In the Visibility section, choose whether the filter appears as a search option and/or within the listing of each associated store:

Re-order filters

To change the display order of your filters, open the  Settings > Search Filters page of the dashboard and drag-and-drop the handle of the filter you'd like to move:

Apply a filter to a location in the dashboard

Once a filter has been created, you can apply it to one or more stores in your account. When adding or editing a store, select the check box next to the appropriate filter name in the Organization section of the location editor:

Then, click Save to update the location.

You can also apply a filter in bulk to many locations at once - see our article on making bulk updates.

Apply filters to locations when importing a spreadsheet

To apply search filters when importing locations from a spreadsheet, add an additional column to your spreadsheet for each filter you've created in your account. The order of the columns doesn't matter.

In the heading row of the new column, enter the name of the filter. In each store row, add Yes in the filter column if the filter applies to that store, otherwise leave the filter column blank (or enter No).

For example, if you had filters for "Bath Products" and "Fragrances", your spreadsheet might look like this:

When importing your spreadsheet in the app dashboard, on the Identify Columns step, be sure the columns in your file are set to import to the relevant filters in Stockist:

Adjust filter behavior

If a visitor to your store locator selects multiple filters at a single time, Stockist will normally only show stores that match all of the selected filters. If you would prefer to show stores that match any of the selected filters, you can change this under Settings > Search filters > Search filter settings:

Using any behavior may be a better fit if your filters are mutually exclusive (e.g. "Bar / Restaurant" vs. "Retail store").

Tracking filter use

If you have one or more filters set to appear as search options, and your plan has our Analytics feature enabled, each search record will track which filters (if any) were selected for a particular search.
To view the filter information for your recent searches, you can export the spreadsheet of recent searches from the bottom of the Analytics page of the app dashboard, then check the "Query filters" column of the exported spreadsheet.