Retail chains
Not every one of your stores is the same shop.
Show shoppers which store is nearest, what that store actually does, and whether it is open, concessions and outlets included.
Bring your location data
CSV import, Google Sheets sync or dashboard edits.
Shape the visitor journey
Search, filters, hours, directions and custom actions.
Match your site
85+ available settings, markers and provider map styles.
What your network looks like
Your own estate in several formats at once: full-line branches, smaller high street sites, outlet stores clearing last season, and concessions sitting inside somebody else's department store or garden centre.
Why a generic map falls short
Retail chains are judged on the trip a shopper actually made. Sending someone to an outlet for a full price line, or to a concession that shut when the department store did, costs a visit and usually the sale attached to it.
What visitors need to do
- Filter by store format, because an outlet and a flagship are not interchangeable
- Flag which stores take click and collect, returns and repairs
- Hold hours for concessions that open and close with the host store rather than with you
- Change seasonal hours across the whole estate before the holiday weekend, not after it
How Handled covers it
- Filterable tags for store format, click and collect, returns desk and in-store services, with a count beside each option
- Opening hours per store, held separately, so a concession can follow the host's timetable
- Google Sheets sync with change review, so a seasonal hours update is previewed row by row before it goes live
- Featured ordering to lift a flagship above the rest, with a radius past which priority stops applying so it never outranks the store across the road
Not every retail chains business is the same
Full-line branches
The stores the brand is judged on: the whole range, the services desk, the staff who can actually help. They are worth lifting in the results, but only locally. Featured ordering with a radius puts a flagship above the smaller sites around it, and stops applying before it starts outranking the branch across the road from the shopper.
Outlet stores
An outlet carries last season at a different price, and often will not take a return from the full-price estate. A shopper who drives there for a current line has had a wasted afternoon and blames the finder, not the format. Tag them plainly and let people filter them out as easily as they filter them in.
Concessions inside somebody else's building
A concession has no front door of its own. It opens when the department store opens, closes when the host decides to close, and moves floor when the host reshuffles. Hours are held per store so the concession follows the host calendar, and a custom field carries the floor and the entrance to use once the shopper is inside.
Seasonal and pop-up sites
A Christmas unit or a summer pop-up trades for a few weeks and then must vanish. Nothing publishes or retires it for you on a date, so this is a diary job: add it with its own tag and hours when the lease starts, take it down the week it ends. A pop-up still listed in February is worse than one never listed at all.
Setting it up
1. Agree the format vocabulary before the first import
Flagship, high street, outlet, concession, pop-up: pick the words your own team already uses and stop there. Every tag you add is another checkbox a shopper has to read, and the shortest list that still separates a wasted trip from a good one is the right one.
2. Import the estate from the file you already keep
CSV import takes the store list finance or property maintains, so nobody retypes two hundred addresses. Check the coordinates once it lands: a mistyped postcode does not fail, it just puts a store somewhere plausible and wrong, and that is the error nobody spots until a customer does.
3. Give concessions the host's calendar, not yours
Hours are held per store, so set concession hours from the host's published times rather than copying the estate default. Then note who tells you when the host changes them, because that phone call is the part that actually breaks.
4. Stage the seasonal hours in a sheet and review the diff
Bank holiday and Christmas hours are one edit across the whole estate, which is exactly when a wrong row goes unnoticed. Google Sheets sync shows the changes row by row before they publish, so the store that was set to close at 16:00 on the wrong day gets caught in review.
5. Give regional managers their own logins
Team roles mean the person who knows the repairs desk moved can fix it, without being able to edit the rest of the estate. Corrections that need a central request usually do not get made at all.
What to prepare before you publish
You do not need a perfect data system to start. A clean first list is enough to test the visitor journey, then you can keep it current from the workflow that suits your team.
- Location name and address
- Phone, website or booking link
- Categories, products or services
- Opening hours and special hours
- A map provider key
- The page where the locator will be embedded
Handled does not generate a page per store
The locator is a widget you drop into a page you already own. It will not create a page for each of your stores, which is what an agency usually means by local search for a chain. Those pages stay a job for your own CMS. It is the sort of thing we can build to order, and if it matters to your plan, ask before the trial rather than finding it out during one.
Questions we get asked
Can shoppers filter by store format so an outlet is not mixed in with the full-line branches?
Yes. Format is a filterable tag with a count beside each option, so flagship, high street, outlet, concession and pop-up separate cleanly and a shopper can rule out an outlet in a single tap.
How do we handle a concession that keeps the host department store's opening hours?
Hours are held per store rather than inherited from an estate default, so a concession follows the host's published times. Put the floor and the entrance to use in a custom field, because a concession has no front door of its own.
Can we push a seasonal hours change across the whole estate and check it before it goes live?
Yes. Google Sheets sync shows the change row by row before it publishes, so a store set to close at 16:00 on the wrong day is caught in review rather than by a shopper standing outside it.
Will Handled build a separate web page for every store in the chain?
No. Handled is a widget you drop into a page you already own, and it does not generate a page per store. Those stay a job for your own CMS. It is the sort of thing we build to order, so ask before the trial rather than finding out during one.
How much does a store locator for a retail chain cost?
From $19 per month, after a 7-day free trial that does not ask for a card, and there is no free plan afterwards. The map key is yours, so Mapbox or Google bills you for map usage directly instead of us reselling it to you.
Can a pop-up store be set to disappear from the store finder on the day the lease ends?
No. Nothing publishes or retires a location on a date for you, so a seasonal unit is a diary job: add it with its own tag when the lease starts and take it down the week it ends. A pop-up still listed in February is worse than one never listed.
If you need something that is not here
Handled is small enough to build to order. If your trade needs a field, a filter or a behaviour the locator does not have yet, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is a week away or not something we will do.