customizing checkout process by adding "store locator" functionality to it

Greetings:

The biggest challenge of my store is going to be customizing the checkout process.

My store's checkout process is unique in that items ordered from my store are not shipped to the customer's home address (or any other address that they provide)...instead, the orders are shipped to a store location.

Information on the stores (addresses, phone numbers, etc) are stored in the database (I'm actually using the 'Manufacturers', just treating them as 'Stores').  During the checkout process, I need to require that the customer select a store nearby.  Obviously, depending on where they live there might be multiple stores nearby, and they will have to choose one.

So, the challenge I'm faced with is trying to incorporate some sort of "Store Locator" functionality into my checkout process.

I've searched for nopCommerce plugins that might accomplish, but I've not had much luck in finding anything that suits my needs perfectly.

If you are aware of a good approach I might take I would appreciate it if you could share it with me.  Any advice, insights, links to other sites would be much appreciated.

For what it's worth, I really like this store locator (7-11 stores):  http://www.7-eleven.com/locator.aspx

Do you think there is a way for me to capture the store location my customer chooses and insert that selection into the checkout form?

Thanks in advance.

Josh

You might be able to handle this as Shipping Options.  I just tried it with Shipping Director, and it worked!
(well, sort of :)

I set up two shipping options each with the Description Expression using an html anchor element, I got the html from Google Maps - here's an example  (I had to double the quotes, because it's a string expression)

"<a href=""http://maps.google.com/maps ...[removed fro brevity]..."">View Map</a>"


And this is what I get during checkout:

Select shipping method

New York, NY ($0.00)
    View Map

Farmingdale, NY ($0.00)
    View Map


The View Map links take me to Google Maps. (although these navigated the existing page, so the html would need some tweaking to launch another page/tab).


The caveat being that I had to enter the html in the database directly.  I couldn't use the Admin Config page directly, because nopC throws error:
A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client (DescriptionExpression=""<a href="http://maps...").

or I get this if trying to enter html in the grid (via Ajax)
Error! The Requested Url returned 500 - Error

It looks like there is an AllowHtml attribute that I can use on the Description property, but I'll have to try it. (and of course come out with an updated version :)

Thanks for writing, I appreciate your input.

I'm not sure I explained myself clearly enough.

I need to incorporate something that will allow the customer to select a shipping destination based on where they live.  As such, I won't know which shipping destinations (ie, store locations) I should be displaying until the customer provides a zipcode.

PS - I'm taking a closer look now at Shipping Director...perhaps it can be tweaked enough to help me make some progress.  Thanks for sharing.

In both the Estimate Shipping and in the checkout process ("Ship to this Address"), customer can enter a Zip Code.
Shipping Director can evaluate what stores (shipping options) to display based on that Zip Code.
A future version will have ability for Shipping Director to call the Google Distance API.

That is excellent.  Glad you brought this tool to my attention.  I'm going to download the trial version and if I can get it working well enough I will buy it.  Thanks!