FREE Store Locator by ZIP Code, supporting over 10,000 customers since 2002

With the trend toward online shopping on the rise, more and more traditional brick and mortar businesses have found that they need to have an online presence to remain competitive, to increase profits and market share. This also has the added advantage of creating strong online brand recognition, provide good customer service and open 24/7/365 days a year. Let's take the example of Blockbuster. Its core business is operating several thousand brick and mortar stores that rent DVDs, Blu-ray discs and video games. Now the company also offers flat-rate subscription plans which permit customers to rent discs both online and in the brick and mortar stores in order to compete against Neflix, the online DVD and Blu-ray Disc rental service provider.

Forrester Research estimates that nearly two-thirds of the total online benefits for brick and mortar businesses will be in offline transactions influenced by online experience. The Forrester Research Cross-Channel Survey found that 61 percent of consumers have used a retailer's web site to research a product before buying it in that same company's store. Hence it is an important aspect of getting the potential customers to their doors quickly, accurately and free of frustrations by allowing them to find the closest stores based on their zip codes.

ZIPCodeWorld offers the FREE Store Locator Live service to businesses or organizations that require the ability to let their users or customers search for a particular branch or outlet which is nearest to them. Among the businesses or organizations that would benefit from this FREE service would be retailers, non-governmental organizations, charities, dealers, agents, franchisors, wholesalers, distributors and so much more. The ZIPCodeWorld' Store Locator Live service allows your customers to find stores, dealers, retails, branches, service or business locations nearest to them based on their ZIP codes.

Your customer will be able to search for all the outlets within a certain radius of their current location thus allowing them to quickly locate the nearest outlet to conduct their business.

There is even a pop-up interactive map powered by Google Maps, MapQuest or Yahoo! Maps to help your customers easily find their way to your stores and you can even customize the search page with your own business logo to give it the personal touch. Customers can also perform an advanced store search by Cities or States. We handle all the programming codes, hassle, and system maintenance so you will be able to sit back and watch as our FREE service helps to direct more and more business to your stores. The service is operational 24 x 7 and our support team is always on hand to handle any contingencies.

Your own store locator service can be up and running within minutes with just a few simple steps. This service is complete free for anyone with up to a maximum of 100 stores. First, please go to the Store Locator Live homepage and click on the "Free Registration" link.

You will be redirected to the Account Registration page. After entering your Login Detail and User Detail, just click on the submit button and you will receive our confirmation email in your mailbox. You will need to verify your account for the first time by clicking on one of the links in your email with your confirmation number Your Confirmation#. Once you have verified your account, you can login to our store locator with your email and password. You can start by configuring your Store Locator application settings, as well as updating the General Settings, Customize Fields, Mapping Settings and Miscellaneous Settings.

Once you have configured your application settings, go to the Store / Dealer Admin page and click on Add Store. Fill in your store details such as ZIP Code, Name, Address, City, State, Country, Tel No, Fax No, Email Address, Web Site. You can even set the custom fields if you would like to display more information for your store. You will see the list of your stores shown in the Store / Dealer Admin page. You can manipulate your store listings by utilizing the Search Store function to look for a particular store by its ZIP Code, Name, City, State or Country. You can also modify your store information by clicking on the Edit or the Delete buttons.

To save time and simplify stores creation, the ZIPCodeWorld Store Locator Live service also allows you to Import Stores by using a text file. Once you have finished creating all your stores, please go to the HTML Code page to copy the codes which you will then have to paste into your webpage. Once you have pasted the code, your webpage should now be able to allow visitors to enter their ZIP Codes and search for stores within the selected radius as well as limiting the number of records to display.

Now, let us take a look at a live example of our store locator in action. Please go to http://www.zip-code-locator.com/ and enter a ZIP code in the ZIP code field. You can specify the radius of your search, for example, to search within a radius of 50 miles. You can even determine the maximum number of results to display. Here we can choose to display a maximum of 25 results. We could also sort the results by Distance, Name, Address, City, State and Country. The ZIPCodeWorld' Store Locator Live service also allows customers to perform an advanced store search by Cities or States. Just enter any City names or State names, and our store locator system will display all the stores located in that City or State.

If you would like to develop your own store locator from scratch, ZIPCodeWorld gives away free sample codes on Distance Calculation using Latitude and Longitude in different programming languages such as ASP, PHP, C, C#, Perl, Visual Basic, Java, JavaScript, ColdFusion, VB.Net, PL/SQL and MS-SQL. You can get these free sample codes from here.

If you have more than 100 stores or business locations or you would like to integrate the store locator into your own website, you can take a look at our store locator packages. We offer various store locator packages like.NET, XML and PHP along with data to search for locations in the United States and Canada. If you would like to enhance your store locator with further modifications, you may consider our Store Locator with Full Source Codes package.

Finally, do not forget to register for your own FREE ZIPCodeWorld Store Locator Live account. The ZIPCodeWorld Store Locator Live service supports over 10,000 customers around the globe since 2002; helping them to quickly and easily find what they are looking for. For more information, please visit http://www.zipcodeworld.com/storelocatorlive.htm .

To read the full article with screenshots, please visit http://zipcodeworld.blogspot.com .

Article Source: http://www.mycontentbuilder.com

ZIPCodeWorld.com, the global leader in postal code service industry, provides a wide range of US, Canada and Mexico postal code and area code database to all customers and small businesses worldwide.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated