When a company reaches its third or fourth branch, a contact page with a list of addresses no longer copes. Someone in one town finds the phone number for another, the opening hours shown are those of head office, and only some of the branches appear on the map. A multi-location business website solves this by treating each branch as a small local business, inside the same brand.
The hard part lies not in the development but in the content and the discipline: each location needs something of its own to say, and the contact details have to be the same everywhere they appear.
The location record: a single source for address, opening hours and phone number
Each branch is a record in the admin panel, with fixed fields: name, address, coordinates, phone number, opening hours by day, services available, team. Everything the site shows about the location is read from this record: its page, the list of locations, the footer, the map, the structured data.
You change the opening hours in one place and they update everywhere, and the contact page, the footer and the map no longer contradict one another.
The details in the record must be identical to those in each location’s Google Business Profile. Mismatches confuse both people and the search engine. Each location’s profile links to that location’s page, not to the site’s home page.
What makes one location page different from the others
The temptation is to write one piece of copy and change the name of the town. Google may treat such pages as “doorway” pages (entry pages made only for searches), a practice listed in its spam policies. More importantly, they are no use to someone who wants to know whether the branch in their neighbourhood does what they need.
Content of its own comes from the people at the location. A branch that does not yet have anything specific to show gets a short, accurate page, not one padded out with generic copy.
- The local team: who works there, with photographs taken on the premises.
- Services available: what is done here and what is done only at another branch.
- How to get there: parking, public transport, landmarks, entrance, access for people with disabilities.
- Photographs of the place: the frontage and the interior, so that people recognise the entrance.
The location selector and bookings by branch
Visitors choose their location from a list, from the map or by letting the site suggest the nearest one. For the last option the browser asks their permission to find their position; if they refuse, the list remains. The choice is remembered, so that the phone number, the opening hours and the booking button in the header are those of their location.
Booking always starts from the location. Say you have four salons and one service is offered in only two of them: the form shows the service only where it exists, and the request goes to that branch’s reception, not to a central address. If you use booking software, we check whether it works with multiple locations and connect it to each page.
Multi-location business website: technology and stages
We build on WordPress with a custom theme, on which the brochure-style pages can also be edited with Elementor Pro, a visual editor. Locations and services are two related content types, which is how the site knows what is offered and where. A single installation is usually enough; separate installations for each branch make sense only for franchises that operate independently.
Each location page gets LocalBusiness structured data, meaning a description for search engines with that branch’s address, coordinates, phone number and opening hours. We define restricted user roles, written specifically for the site: the manager of a location can change only that location’s record.
- The inventory: each location’s real details, compared with the Google Business Profiles.
- The URL structure: list of locations, town, branch.
- Local content: photographs and copy gathered from each team.
- Checks: the selector and the bookings, tried for every branch.
- The move to the new site: old URLs redirected, links in the Google Business Profiles updated.
How to find out which location gains from the site
We count separately, by location, the calls started from the site, the booking requests and the requests for directions. The links in the Google Business Profiles carry a tag that lets us see in the statistics how many visitors come from each profile.
One limit: the site cannot make a business appear on the map in a town where it has no branch. Positions in local results also depend on the distance from the person searching, on reviews and on the competition, things no website controls. What does depend on you is discipline: someone has to be responsible for keeping each record up to date.
Frequently asked questions
I open new locations often. How hard is it to add one?
You fill in a new record in the admin panel, with the same fields as the others, and the page, the map and the lists update by themselves. What takes time is gathering the local content: photographs, team, directions.
Do I need a separate domain for each town?
As a rule, no. A single domain with well-made location pages is easier to maintain. Separate domains are justified only when the locations are distinct companies.
What happens when a location closes or moves?
The record is updated or marked as closed, and the old page’s URL is redirected to the nearest location. That branch’s Google Business Profile is changed separately.
This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.