Store map — user guide
How to draw a retail sales floor, describe departments and fixtures, build customer walking routes, and put the finished map on screens in the store.
- 1. Start a store plan
- 2. Lay out the sales floor
- 3. Departments and categories
- 4. Product and fixture details
- 5. Wayfinding — customer routes
- 6. Show the plan on in-store screens
- 7. Save, export and versions
1. Start a store plan
Switch to Store mode
Use the Office / Store switch at the top left. Store mode replaces office furniture with retail elements: gondola shelves, fridges, freezers, checkouts, fitting rooms, entrances and department markers.
Start from a template
Templates opens ready retail layouts — supermarket, fashion store, convenience shop. Click one to load the whole sales floor and adjust it instead of drawing from scratch.
Or trace your own drawing
Upload plan puts a photo or PDF export of your existing layout behind the canvas. Fade it with the opacity slider and use Auto-trace to detect walls and closed rooms automatically.
Set the scale
Open Area & materials and set Scale so metres on the plan match the real sales floor. All distances, route times and area figures depend on it.
2. Lay out the sales floor
Walls and the shell
Pick Wall and drag. The tool stays active, corners are mitred automatically, touching walls are glued. Escape finishes. Place the entrance and exit elements where customers actually come in.
Shelves and equipment
Click a shelf, fridge, freezer, bin or promo stand in the left palette, then click the plan. Drag corner handles to resize a run of shelving, Rotate 90° to turn an aisle.
Keep aisles even
Select a row of shelves and use Space evenly (Across / Down) so aisle widths are equal. While dragging you see the gap to the nearest neighbour in metres — useful for checking trolley clearance.
Checkouts and service points
Place checkouts, self-service tills, customer service, pickup and ATM near the exit. Name each one (Till 1, Till 2…) so they can be used as route destinations later.
3. Departments and categories
Draw a department zone
Zone outline turns clicks into an outline; click the first point or press Enter to close it. Name it Produce, Dairy, Bakery, Electronics — the name is shown on the plan and in search.
Colour-code the store
Give each department its own zone colour in the right panel. Customers read colour faster than text, and the same colours carry over to the in-store screen legend.
Category icons
Store mode ships flat icons for most categories — produce, meat, fish, dairy, frozen, drinks, sweets, chemicals, cosmetics, kids, pets, stationery, home, fitting rooms, toilets. Drop them at the head of each aisle.
Floor covering
Floor area paints the surface under the fixtures, so tiled front-of-house and back-of-house areas read differently.
4. Product and fixture details
Name every fixture
Select a shelf and type a name in the right panel, for example “Aisle 4 — Pasta & sauces”. The name appears on the plan and is searchable.
Add your own fields
+ Field adds anything you need per fixture: category, planogram code, supplier, asset number, facings, responsible manager.
Bulk editing
Select several fixtures and use Set a field on all selected to fill one field at once, or Rename all to number them automatically (Shelf 1, Shelf 2…).
Find anything
The search box at the top right finds a fixture, department or any field value and highlights it on the plan — the fastest way to answer “where is the coffee?”.
5. Wayfinding — customer routes
Open Wayfinding
Press Wayfinding in the top bar. A panel appears above the plan with From, Category and To.
Pick start and destination
From is usually the entrance; To is the product, aisle or department. Both fields autocomplete from every name and field value on the plan, so typing “coffee” finds the shelf you named.
Narrow by type
The Category selector limits suggestions to one kind of element — checkouts only, fitting rooms only, toilets only. Handy when several places share a word.
Build the route
Press ➤ Route. A dashed walking path is drawn around shelves and walls, with the distance in metres and the walking time. ↺ clears it, ⤢ fits the floor to the screen.
Pin a whole category
Show on map pins every item of a type at once — all checkouts, all toilets, all fitting rooms — so customers see the nearest one without a route.
Share a route
⇗ copies a link that opens the map with that exact route already built. Put it in a QR code on a shelf talker, a chat reply or an email.
6. Show the plan on in-store screens
Prepare the view
Build the route you want on display, switch the style to Icons for maximum readability at a distance, and use Fit so the whole floor is visible.
Screen mode
Press Screen in the top bar. The editor turns into a full-screen signage board: large floor name on the left, a legend of departments and element types on the right, and a destination card with walking time. Esc or Exit screen mode returns to editing.
Publish a link
Share → Publish map uploads the plan to the cloud and gives you a link. Turn on “Anyone with the link can view” so a screen can open it without signing in.
Play it on BuzzBlender
Copy that share link and paste it into BuzzBlender as a web page item in your playlist. The screens in the store then show the live plan, and every later Save to cloud updates them automatically.
Kiosk touch screens
On a touch kiosk, open the share link in a browser in full screen. Visitors can use the search box and Wayfinding themselves to route from the kiosk to any product.
7. Save, export and versions
Automatic saving
Work is saved in your browser as you go, per floor. Use + Floor for a second level or a stockroom, and Rename to label them.
Versions
Save version keeps a named cloud snapshot of the floor the whole team can see — useful before a reset or a seasonal layout change. Restore any version later.
Files and print
Save to file downloads the project as .map.json, Open from file loads it back. Export gives a CSV list of fixtures, a single-file HTML page, a PNG image or a printable sheet for the store team.
Area take-off
Area & materials totals floor covering, zone areas, wall length and surface — handy for refit estimates and for reporting selling area per department.
Keyboard shortcuts
- Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Shift + Z
- Undo / redo
- Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V
- Copy / paste
- Ctrl + D
- Duplicate
- Ctrl + A
- Select all
- Ctrl + G / Ctrl + Shift + G
- Group / ungroup
- Delete
- Remove selection
- Shift + drag
- Keep to one axis
- Space + drag
- Pan the canvas
- Enter
- Close a zone outline
- Escape
- Leave the current tool or screen mode
Working in an office instead?
The office guide covers desks, people, desk booking, occupancy analytics and move planning.