You’ve invested in great design, engaging storytelling, a beautiful Shopify storefront, and stunning bottle photography. But if customers can’t quickly figure out where to buy, all that work stalls at the finish line. A wine product locator closes the gap between interest and action, giving shoppers a fast, intuitive way to find your bottles in local stores, restaurants, bars, and online marketplaces.

The best part? Adding a locator to Shopify is far simpler than most brands assume. In this guide, we’ll look at how product locators help drive sales and how to add one to your Shopify site.

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Why Shopify Is the Perfect Platform for a Product Locator

Shopify has become the go-to platform for growing wine brands and for good reason. It’s simple, flexible, and built to integrate seamlessly with the tools modern consumer brands rely on. When it comes to adding a product locator to your site, Shopify’s structure and ease of use make it one of the most efficient platforms to work with.

Learn more: 10 Best Shopify Store Locator Apps

Simple, Non-Technical Setup

Shopify is designed for marketers and brand teams, not developers. That means you can add a locator without a dedicated dev team, backend engineering support, or a complicated site theme. Most brands can drop a snippet of code or a pre-built embed into a page and be live immediately.

Flexible Placement Across Your Site

One of Shopify’s biggest strengths is layout flexibility. A product locator can be placed:

• On a dedicated “Find Us” or “Where to Buy” page
• Below product descriptions to support customers who prefer retail
• In the main navigation as a quick-access utility
• On landing pages tied to specific campaigns or varietals
  

No matter your theme, Shopify makes it easy to position the locator exactly where customers expect it.

Learn how to optimize your product locator page →

Perfect for Multi-Channel Wine Brands

Most modern wine brands sell across multiple channels: direct-to-consumer, traditional retail, online marketplaces, tasting rooms, or wine clubs. Shopify is uniquely well-suited to that kind of hybrid model. Its flexible architecture allows you to showcase wines, tell your brand story, sell online, and direct customers to retail partners—all in one platform. 

A product locator fits naturally into an omnicommerce strategy, giving visitors a simple, clear way to choose the buying option that works best for them, whether that’s a local bottle shop or an online retailer that ships to their state.

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Step-by-Step: How to Add a Wine Product Locator to Shopify

Adding a wine product locator to your Shopify site is far easier than most teams expect. The process is straightforward, doesn’t require a developer, and can be completed quickly once your data is in order. Here’s what the setup typically looks like from start to finish.

1. Gather Your Product and Retailer Data

The first step is collecting the information your locator will rely on: where your wines are sold and which products are available at each location. This includes retailer names, addresses, online sellers, distributors, and any relevant SKUs. 

Many wine brands worry that their data isn’t “clean” enough for a locator, but that’s common; retailer lists often come from multiple sources, and formats can vary widely. What matters most is pulling everything into one place. Once you have that, it can be organized, standardized, and prepared for launch.

2. Review and Approve Your Locator’s Features & Design

Next, you’ll define how you want the locator to look and behave. This is where brands make decisions about:

• Whether they want customers to search by zip code, city, or their geolocation
• If the locator should include online retailer options 
• How results should be displayed on desktop and mobile
• Branding elements such as colors, icons, and layout choices
  
  

For wine brands, this is a key moment to align the locator with the rest of the Shopify experience. A well-designed locator should feel like a natural extension of your visual identity, matching your typography, tone, and the premium feel of your packaging and website.

3. Add the Locator Code to Your Shopify Site

Once the design and features are set, installing the locator is surprisingly simple. You’ll receive a small embed code that can be pasted directly into any Shopify page, section, or template. Some brands add it to a dedicated /find-us or /where-to-buy page, while others place it on product description pages to give customers immediate buying options. 

Because Shopify’s editor is intuitive and flexible, you typically don’t need a developer. It’s as easy as adding a new block, choosing the “Custom HTML” option, and pasting in the code.

4. Publish Your Locator and Start Monitoring Customer Insights

Once the code is embedded, your locator goes live instantly. From there, it operates in the background, providing customers with up-to-date retailer and online availability information. Behind the scenes, your locator generates valuable insights: where shoppers are searching, which products generate the most interest, and where there may be gaps in distribution.

Over time, these patterns help wine brands refine distribution strategies, support retailer relationships, and identify emerging regions of demand.

5. Keep Your Locator Updated (Without Manual Work)

After launch, your locator should remain accurate as your distribution evolves. New retailers are added, seasonal placements change, and new SKUs are added to the mix. Most wine brands assume they’ll need to manually update their locator or assign someone internally to maintain it, but modern locator services eliminate that burden by handling data and design updates for you. As your footprint grows, your locator stays current; no theme updates, no code changes, and no backend maintenance required.

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Why Every Wine Brand Needs a Product Locator

A product locator is one of the most effective sales tools a wine brand can add to its website. Today, most consumer discovery starts online, even for products ultimately purchased in stores. Customers research varietals, compare tasting notes, follow recommendations from creators, and click through paid or social campaigns before making a decision. But when they’re ready to buy, they hit one of the biggest barriers in the wine category: figuring out where to actually find the bottle.

Without a Locator, Brands Lose High-Intent Buyers

When customers can’t find your wines without effort, you risk:

• Drop-offs at the most critical point in the buying journey
• Lost sales to competing bottles sitting on the same shelf
• Confusion about distribution, especially if your presence varies regionally
• Frustration, which decreases loyalty and repeat purchases
  

Brands often underestimate how many potential buyers abandon the process simply because they weren’t shown a fast, clear path to purchase.

Learn about the costly mistakes brands make without a product locator →

Marketing Campaigns Underperform Without a Path to Purchase

You can pour time and budget into beautiful creative, influencer partnerships, paid ads, seasonal campaigns, or glowing media coverage—but if customers don’t know where to buy your wines, the momentum disappears. Attention alone doesn’t drive revenue. Without a clear, immediate path to purchase, even the strongest campaigns lose their impact at the exact moment interest peaks.

A product locator fixes that by giving every campaign a destination. It takes all of your discovery channels:

• Social posts highlighting new releases
• Influencer mentions and tasting notes
• Paid search and social ads
• Email announcements
• Press, awards, and reviews
  

… and turns them into direct purchase opportunities instead of dead-end traffic.

This matters because wine consumers don’t behave like typical e-commerce shoppers. Many prefer to buy locally, compare options across retailers, or pick up a bottle for an event on short notice. When your campaign leads to a locator, customers can instantly see where your wines are stocked nearby or available online, creating a seamless transition from inspiration to action.

Instead of campaigns that create interest but not outcomes, you end up with marketing that reliably moves bottles off shelves, boosts online orders, supports retail partners, and drives measurable ROI.

Learn more: 6 Proven Wine Marketing Strategies [+ Bonus Tools]

Better Data = Smarter Market Decisions

A locator gives wine brands an advantage most overlook: search and demand insights.
Understanding where customers want your wines helps you:

• Prioritize new distribution
• Identify underserved regions
• Support retailer relationships
• Align sales and marketing resources
• Allocate inventory where it will move fastest
  

This type of location-based demand data is rarely accessible through retailers or distributors alone. A product locator fills that gap.

Learn how Grappos gathers valuable consumer data with SearchTracker →