One Tap, Right There: How "Use My Location" Gets Outlet Shoppers to the Right Door

“Use My Location” helps shoppers quickly find the nearest outlet with accurate positioning, relevant filters, store hours, and directions. Learn why location accuracy matters for outlet retail.

4 minutes, 25 seconds

By Belma Kapetanović

Marketing Manager

Published Sep 03, 2026

Someone standing in a mall parking lot, or scrolling on their couch at 9pm, wants to know which outlet stores are actually close to them. With Store Locator 2.0, that's one tap: Use My Location, and the shopper's pin lands exactly where they are. No address to type, no list to scroll through first. The map centers on their real position immediately, on a page built for the device most of them are holding. Geolocation is especially valuable on mobile, which now accounts for the majority of web traffic.

That precision matters more than it sounds like. "Use My Location" is a permissioned request straight to the shopper's device. They tap it, their browser asks if the site can use their actual position, and the map centers on the real answer. Everything downstream inherits that accuracy: which stores sort as nearest, which pin the map defaults to, which directions link fires first. The bar worth designing to is a simple one: nearest store, on screen, within three seconds of the tap.

Why a well-placed pin matters more at an outlet center than anywhere else

Precision pays off most exactly where outlet retail lives: clustered locations, similar names, shared parking lots. If a shopper's position is off by even a few hundred meters, a locator can easily default to the wrong entrance, the wrong side of a two-level outlet mall, or a sister location a few exits down the highway. A geolocation button removes that ambiguity at the source: the pin is placed correctly, so the results that sort by distance are correct too.

That's also where the rest of the map does its job. Store Locator 2.0's layout templates were built to present results at a glance once positioning is solid, from compact single-column views for fast mobile scanning to richer premium layouts when more store detail is useful. Locations can also be filtered and color-coded on the map, so an outlet door and a full-price flagship a block away don't look identical once the shopper is accurately placed among them. The filters that earn their place aren't generic categories. They're the ones that map to a real decision a shopper is making in that moment (outlet vs. full-price, which services are on-site), the same principle that usability research on locators that convert keeps landing on.

Two things worth being honest about

Nielsen Norman Group's usability research on store locators (four rounds of studies, 46 users, 56 sites) is a useful reality check here. Across those rounds, task success rates climbed sharply, from 63% in the first study to 97% in the most recent, yet users still completed only 57% of locator tasks easily, running into difficulty about 40% of the time. Locators are harder to get right than they look, and two specific risks are worth designing around rather than assuming away:

Some users, especially on desktop, simply miss the browser's location-permission popup because their attention is elsewhere on the page when it appears.
A shopper who declines location access the first time often has no easy way to reconsider. The denial can stick for the rest of the session unless they change it in their browser settings.

Neither is a reason to skip the button. NN/g's own recommendation is to include an explicit "Use Current Location" element rather than relying on silent auto-detection, which is exactly the pattern here. Google's own guidance agrees: ask for location access only after a user interaction, never on page load. It's a reason "Use My Location" has to sit next to Autocomplete and search-by-name rather than replace them: someone who missed the prompt, or said no once, still needs a fast path to an accurate answer.

Staying on the map, not routing away from it

There's a broader industry pull toward linking store locators out to Google Maps or Apple Maps instead of building an on-site map at all. NN/g notes most sites they tested now do this, on the logic that shoppers already know how to use a map they've used a hundred times before. That's a reasonable trade-off for a lot of sites. It's also a trade-off Store Locator 2.0 deliberately doesn't make: routing a shopper off-site into a generic maps result means losing them to whatever else is on that page (competitor pins, reviews, ads) at the exact moment they were closest to visiting. Keeping the map, the filters, and the pin accuracy in one place is what turns "Use My Location" into a conversion lever instead of an exit door.

What happens if someone says no to location access

Not every shopper grants permission, and that's fine. It's why "Use My Location" sits next to Autocomplete and search-by-name rather than replacing them. Someone who declines, or missed the prompt entirely, can still type an address or a store name and get the same accurate map behind it. The button is the fast path for the shopper who just wants an immediate answer; the search field is still there as the deliberate one.

Hours and directions still close the loop

Position solves where. Shoppers still need two more things answered without digging: is it open, and how do I get there. Store Locator 2.0's Customize Map settings keep those as their own configuration sections (appearance, filters, results, and directions), so once a shopper's location is set correctly, the next tap is a directions link that actually goes to the right door, not a nearby one.

The real goal: one tap to "I'm here"

Every piece of this is in service of one thing. The geolocation button, the layout that surfaces the right results, the pin styling that tells locations apart, and directions that don't require a second guess all work to collapse the gap between opening the locator and arriving at the right store. Store Locator 2.0 was rebuilt around that gap.