Store Locator

Eileen Fisher’s first store locator to be implemented on the site

Eileen Fisher’s store locator research was conducted 5 years ago. Our recent research found that the majority of our initial designs are no longer useful for providing the necessary information our users are seeking. We have opted to update, implement strategy based on changes in user behavior, and apply modern design trends and developments.

STRATEGY AND DESIGN ELEMENTS

Successfully using a locator involves three steps:

Finding the locator
Using the locator to find your desired location
Getting directions from your starting point to this location

All three of these steps must be easy. One of the biggest reasons for the dramatic increase in locator usability — most sites offer clearly labeled links to their locators. Made-up or fancy link names are almost a thing of the past. In our research, 90% of the sites researched did so.

Step 2 is the main culprit in usability problems these days: The actual location finders are either too complex, or they are oversimplified, making it more difficult for users to find which locations meet their needs.

Step 3 is also easier now, as most sites use better mapping services than we saw originally.

Key Design Elements to be included were:

Search Results

Geo Location

Store Details and Directions

Individual Store Hours & Special Hours

Call Store

Filters

Breadcrumbs (on all devices)

Events in Stores

SEO Optimization

first iteration - JOURNEY MAP

S-MOBILE-Functionality-Search Results.png

People Gravitate to Search to Find Locations

Another big difference compared to our initial study is the strong increase in search dominance when looking for company locations. This is no surprise; we've found increasing search dominance in many other recent studies as well.

In our recent research, 80% of users went directly to a search engine or dedicated mapping app (mainly Google Maps) when we asked them to find a nearby location, while the remaining 20% navigated directly to our website.

This search-dominant behavior also raises a question: Should you eliminate the location finder from your own site, since so many people turn to search first? The answer is no, for two reasons:

Users should be able to easily access a location finder. Because they might make this decision on any page of your site, all pages should link to the locator via our header and footer.
Even people who start out at a search engine will often prefer your site’s locator tool for specific details, such as what services or amenities are offered. To make this option possible, our site features an up-to-date, accurate list of features available at each location, and have made sure that this information is findable by those who search for it on the web via Customer Data Cookies to provide us with analytics.

External Mapping Tool Dominance

Research showed users’ increasing reliance on external mapping tools such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, or Waze to provide turn-by-turn directions. We have reacted to this new state of facts, and opted to link out to Google Maps (via API) as our external mapping tool.

This movement to leveraging external mapping tools leads to a better, more consistent user experience. Users can rely on an interface that is familiar and trustworthy (that of their phone’s native map app on mobile or of Google Maps on desktop) instead of having to learn a new map interface for every website the user visits.