How to create Company or Store Location Pages in SharePoint

I recently worked with a client who happened to be in the restaurant industry. They own around two hundred fast food restaurants in several states across the US. As part of the Intranet I was building for them, they wanted to have a place for each store to display some basic information about each store location. Things like address, phone #, store manager, working hours, and some other attributes. Due to these requirements, I decided to utilize SharePoint pages. So, in this article, let me demonstrate how I achieved this requirement.

Proposed Solution of Company Pages in SharePoint

There are many different ways to achieve the above requirement. However, I decided to go with pages due to the following reasons:

• Easy to edit and create
• Easy to create a template of
• Visually appealing

Here is what I ended up with:

Example of a Company/Store Location Page in SharePoint

And yes, it made me hungry all the time while I was working on this project 🤣

Step 1: Create a Communication Site

The first step is to create the site where all the store pages will reside. Since the objective here is information sharing, a Communication Site is a perfect fit!

Step 2: Determine the content for the Store Page

Before we design store pages, we need to decide what content to add. Below is what I added in terms of content for my client; of course, it might differ based on your requirements. You can also see the web parts I used to display the content in parenthesis.

• Store Name & Number (Page Title)
• Store Manager (People)
• Address (Maps)
• Phone and Email (Text)
• Weather (Weather)
• Links (Quick Links)
• Calendar (Events)

Step 3: Create the first Store Page

Once we have a site, it is time to create the first store page. To do so:

1. From the Site created above, click New > Page
2. Choose Blank template
3. At this point, you can design the page with any look and feel you desire by creating columns, sections, and adding web parts

Step 4: Create Store Page Template

Once you have finalized the sample store page, we must convert it into the template. This will make it easier for others to replicate the store pages. Here are instructions on how to create a page template in SharePoint.

Step 5: Create a custom list

Next, we need to create a custom list to capture all the page URLs in a single place. At a minimum, you will have 2 columns – one for the name of the location and the other for the link to each store page. In my case, I created a list to capture the following information (in parentheses, I listed the type of column used):

• Store Name (Title/Text)
• Store Page Link (Hyperlink)
• Store Manager (People)
• Photo (Image)

I actually explained how to build such a list in an earlier article. Below is a screenshot of what I created.

Step 6: Create other pages from a template

Now that we have built the foundation, it is time to start replicating pages from our template. Once again, I provided instructions for this here.

Step 7: Populate the List

As you create pages, you can also populate the information (Page URL, photo, and other metadata) into the list.

Step 8: Create a Gallery View

The final and optional step is to create alternate views. While the default grid view allows you to filter the list easily, I personally like the Gallery view since it makes the list and data visually appealing. I explained how to create a Gallery view of such a list here.

Additional Information

• Joanne Klein published a similar article a while back. In it, she also provides an alternate technique for automatically aggregating individual store pages using HCWP Web Part (instead of manually populating them in a custom list). Check it out here.
• For additional examples of location pages and lists, check out LookBook 365.