Three Ways to Optimize The Locally Product Locator.
Hundreds of brands use Locally’s Product Locator on their websites to drive more sales and connect shoppers to products immediately available nearby. Our Product Locator is installed directly onto a brand's website to show website visitors what products are available and in stock at local stores near them, enabling brands to offer more purchasing options for their customers and build brand affinity. Recent updates to our Product Locator modal have made it even more customer-centric and effective for increasing sales.
Our Product Locator turns a single product page into a seamless multichannel experience for shoppers. This example from Oboz demonstrates how the Product Locator provides shoppers with local store information and product availability.
Just as with all of Locally’s tools, the Product Locator is powered by live inventory from our retail network of 21,000+ stores. Inventory data is collected from our retail network and then published on our brand partner’s website through the Product Locator. When a shopper visits a product page on a brand’s website, the tool auto-detects that shopper’s location and shows them the following:
Local dealer information
That product’s local availability
The tool also enables brands to facilitate popular purchase options for shoppers including:
Buy Online, Pick Up In-store (BOPIS)
Reserve Online, Pay In-Store (ROPIS)
Ship-to-Store
Same-Day Delivery
The Product Locator enables our brand partners to offer immediacy and local purchase options to online shoppers. In other words, it facilitates online-to-offline shopping, the most common path to purchase in retail. Creating a smooth online-to-offline experience is essential to winning more customers and building brand affinity—so the more shoppers a brand can engage with the Product Locator, the better the bottom line for sales, customer acquisition, and customer loyalty.
The Product Locator is also highly customizable, so there are many ways it can be implemented. We recently analyzed several implementations to determine the most effective way to install the tool. We found that when brands display dealer and local availability more prominently on a product page, the Locally Product Locator is more effective.
Whether your brand currently utilizes our Product Locator, or you are considering implementing this popular tool, take a look at these three ways to optimize the Product Locator:
Install The Product Locator With an Open Layout
We found that Product Locators installed with an open layout get the most clicks. The open format means the dealer information is visible directly on the product page, rather than available through a button or dropdown. It’s both more accessible for the customer and also more effective for you.
Take a look at this example from Cannondale below. Shoppers can see nearby dealers and available stock without having to scroll, navigate a dropdown, or click through to a separate page.
Clients who use utilize an open format see a 2.09% average click-through rate to the modal, while clients who opt to not install the open format see a 1.19% click-through rate. Our clients who install an open format Product Locator higher on the product page see an even more favorable conversion rate of 2.62%—the easier the local availability and dealer information is to see for shoppers, the more likely it is you will increase sales.
All of our brand partners who see the most sales and the highest ROIs with Locally have opted for an open layout for their Product Locator.
Display Results Vertically
Store results and product visibility can either be stacked vertically or horizontally with an open layout. To fit three or more dealer results onto the page, we recommend displaying Product Locator results vertically. You can see how information is displayed more accessible in this implementations from Yakima.
A vertical, stacked layout allows for more information to be displayed on the product page. Brands that make store and stock information more prominent see more success with the Product Locator.
Reload With UPC Updates
For products with multiple variants, show shoppers specific color and size-level availability by using our reload function to update the Product Locator widget with the shopper's specific selection. The Product Locator can account for color and size selections by reloading the dealer results with an updated UPC. This ensures the shopper is viewing the most accurate local availability information.
The reload function is easy to add (see our FAQ here). It’s a small change that makes a major impact. Trek has chosen to incorporate the reload feature into their Product Locator—you can see how local availability automatically changes as the shopper updates their selection:
Our Product Locator is a powerful tool in implementing an online to offline strategy. These three simple optimizations will help engage more shoppers and drive more sales.
