Geo-location based store finder
Coffee Culture has over 50 locations across Ontario, Manitoba and Pennsylvania. With number of locations is expected to grow in the near future, the client wanted us to implement a solution that would make it easy to match their geographic location to the nearest Coffee Culture cafe. Having this ability also would allow specific promotions to be showcased for any of the store locations.
We decided to develop a custom WordPress plugin called Shift8 GEO IP Locaiton. Developing a solution in-house gave us complete flexibility to tailor the solution to meet the needs and expectations of our client. The plugin ultimately detects their location and sets the geo-coordinates as an encrypted browser cookie. We then developed custom code specific to the client to match those coordinates with the nearest store location based on address matching.
With this solution, we were thinking long term. We wanted the client to have the option in the future to have a specific “My Store” dashboard where promotions, communications, specials and everything in between could be leveraged with each customer.
