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Store pages: giving local answers to local customers
“If customers are doing local searches, why not give them local answers?”
Customers search across multiple channels, maps, web, ads and others, and it is essential to make sure we give them the right information across all of them. This is not only related to keeping great branding but has a real impact on driving more business. According to Google, 1 in 3 mobile searches are local, and 76% of these searches end in a visit to the store within the following 24 hours. It is relevant for retailers to think local and increase their online presence to redirect traffic to their physical stores.
Wondering how…?
As shown in the image below, search results that show in the first page of Google are composed of three different sections: map listings, local ads and blue links.
- Map listings: Having your business listed means that you need to provide accurate and consistent information. This is crucial if you want your customers to find you easily. But what does this involve? In a nutshell, it means providing the same information, such as your business name, addresses, coordinates and contact details, on all listing platforms. You wouldn’t want a customer to find your store on Google, go there and realise that the address was wrong, would you?
- Local ads: These are paid campaigns targeting audiences close to your physical locations that can interact with your business by calling the store, getting directions on a map or engaging with your website.
- Web results or Blue links: the rest of the search results thrown up by the search. It is very difficult for local results to appear in the general pages. Let’s set an example: If a customer types in “phone company Gran Vía”, will Movistar’s main page appear in the results? Probably not. Google tries to identify those websites that talk specifically about the content the user is trying to find.
And this is where Store Pages come in!
The Customer Journey
In all three of the touchpoints mentioned above Store Pages are relevant. No matter which path the customer takes, good Store Pages can enhance their journey (and your results). Let’s take a look at 3 possible scenarios.
- Scenario 1: A potential customer is browsing in maps. They are searching for a store nearby and find the profile of your brand that suits their needs. When clicking on the website link, will it be enough for them to land on your homepage? The answer is, of course, no. If they have done a local search, found a local profile and are navigating locally, it follows that they want a local result.
- Scenario 2: When setting up a campaign, where do you direct customers? If the landing page where you are redirecting them is the homepage, then don’t be surprised if conversion rates are low. Why invest in local ads if when customers finally click on it, they are sent to the generic website?
- Scenario 3: A customer knows us and is currently navigating our website to find information about their nearest store. Will your homepage be enough? Of course not. That user needs to land on a specific page that provides the information they are looking for: discounts, promotions, stock and opening hours of the store closer to them, just to mention a few.
In all three scenarios, the customer needs to be taken from a general query to their own customised local information. That customer needs to land in the store page of his interest.
Benefits of Store Pages
1. Increasing user experience and retention: By setting up a Store Page, we are improving navigation, usability, and retention, which means the amount of time our customer spends on our website. We’ll give him the exact information he came looking for.
2. Attracting new customers: Customers don’t find our brand only through direct searches, they also search through categories, which include “near me” results. If they search for “phone stores near me” and Google detects those words on our website, it’ll give us visibility, and we’ll be attracting new traffic.
3. Improving our SEO: By adding content to these Store Pages and using the right keywords, our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) positioning will improve. Google takes into account the information within these pages and shows it in our profiles, again increasing visibility.
4. Boost the quality score of our campaigns: By creating specific store pages, we are redirecting our prospects or customers to good quality, interesting links that meet their needs. That landing page will contain the exact words that match the user’s search.
How we can help
At Localistico, we are committed to helping you drive more traffic to your store locations and easily gain some really useful insights. Here’s how we can help you achieve this:
SEO optimised templates: we can automatically generate a Store Page for each one of your locations. These will not only be SEO optimised, but they will also come with structured information. In this way, we are helping Google better read the information on our website and index it, which will increase our visibility when showing results to users.
How do we work?
First, we create the template, but it doesn’t end there! Once we have those, we’ll use the available data on the platform to create:
- Store Locator: This will make it very easy for your users to find you. They can search by Zip Code or Address, for example.
- Area Page: This is an in-between page where all the stores in a specific area are shown, for example, the stores in Madrid.
- Store Page: We can help you generate SEO optimised store pages based on location data for your own website or landing pages for digital campaigns.
Whether you are using integration or manual files, you can incorporate Store Pages to your website. We already have your data, so now we’ll manage the information as if it was another platform such as Google or Yelp. If you want to change your opening hours, for example, you only have to do it once in the Localistico platform, and it will be automatically updated in your new Store Page.
Customization
We often get questions such as: “can we use our corporate colours?” or “Can we add photos?” The answer: Of course you can!
All Store Pages are branded with the company’s logo and brand identity. We’ll always make sure the look & feel of these match the rest of your resources. We can also add customized information such as stock availability, events, promotions or a “book an appointment” link. If a store offers specific services, such as accessibility for wheelchairs, you can also add this information.
In short, Store Pages will allow you to give your customers the locally customised content they are looking for by:
- Providing local customers with local answers by showing specifically selected information relevant to their actual location
- Reaching your customers while on their journey by impacting your target audience at the right time.
- Increasing the return of your marketing campaigns by understanding consumer behaviour.