The storefront locator

Search & radius

Address search, suggestions, distance and geolocation.

How a shopper gets from "somewhere in the country" to "the three shops near me". All of it is in Settings → Customize, under Search and filters.

A shopper types an address, a city or a postcode and presses Search. The locator turns that into a point, drops a marker on it, and shows the locations within the chosen radius, nearest first, each with its distance.

Emptying the box clears the search and puts the map back to every location in the current list.

Turn Show address search off for a locator that is just a map of your shops — a single-city retailer, or a compact block beside a product.

Address suggestions

Suggest addresses as shoppers type turns the box into an autocomplete: after a few characters it offers matching addresses, and choosing one searches it directly.

It is off by default, for two reasons worth knowing:

  • It uses your map provider's search, so it counts towards your Google or Mapbox usage — a few requests per search rather than one. On Google it also needs the Places API enabled on your key; see Map provider.
  • The plain box is perfectly good for postcodes and city names, which is what most shoppers type.

Turn it on when your shoppers search full street addresses, where getting the spelling right matters.

Suggestions are keyboard-navigable — arrow keys to move, Enter to choose, Escape to dismiss — and obey Limit search to countries like the rest of search.

Use my location

Show "Use my location" offers the shopper's own position as the search point. It leads the search box, so it costs no extra row of buttons; with search switched off it becomes a button of its own.

The browser asks permission, and the app cannot do anything about a refusal except say so — you can reword that message under Language → When something goes wrong.

Radius

Search radiuses is a comma-separated list of distances in your chosen units: 10, 20, 50, 75. Shoppers pick one; the results are what falls inside it.

Default radius is where a shopper starts. It must be one of your radiuses. Leave it blank and the locator starts with the widest, which shows the most stores — the safer default when you are not sure how dense your coverage is.

Match the list to your footprint. Nationwide dealers want 25, 50, 100, 250; city stockists want 1, 2, 5, 10. A radius list that always returns nothing is the most common reason a locator feels broken.

Distance units switches between miles and kilometers, and the shorthand (mi, km) is editable under Language.

Limiting to a country

Limit search to countries takes two-letter codes, separated by commas: us, us, ca, gb, ie. Up to five.

Set it. If you only ship to and stock in the US, a shopper typing Springfield should not have to scroll past Springfields in three other countries — and neither should their suggestions.

Leave it blank only if your locations genuinely span the world.

When a search finds nothing

Two different outcomes, with two different messages, both editable under Language:

  • The place could not be found — the address itself did not resolve. Often a typo, or a search restricted to countries you did not intend.
  • No locations within the radius — the place was found, but you have nothing nearby. The message suggests a larger radius, which is usually the fix.

Filters and search narrow together: a shopper can search Portland, choose Wheelchair access, and pick a product, and get only the locations that satisfy all three. See Filters.