We’ve all become more reliant on the likes of Google Maps these days. Whether we’re in a new city, on the hunt for the nearest restaurant or tourist attraction, or we’re browsing a business online and want to know where they are located.
In the case of the latter, sites with integrated maps on their homepage or contact page are always a winner. In fact, many different types of websites and businesses can benefit from integrating maps into their site.
From retail stores to music festivals, tourist sites, and even the likes of treasure trails or any other event can effectively hire a website design company to integrate maps. But why should they? We run down four top reasons why you should consider adding a map to your website…
Making Directions Easy
First and foremost, integrating maps into your website will add much more context than simply supplying an address. You’ll be able to visually see exactly where the location is, as well as the roads and other businesses, squares, and parks around it. This can spark familiarity with customers and make finding your location much easier.
What’s more, if a site only has the address in written form, users will likely leave the page to use the likes of Google Maps in order to find your location on the map.
Highlight Points of Interest
There are many reasons why your website may wish to highlight points of interest. You could be writing a travel guide and wish to mark all your recommendations on one map. You could be looking to add them to offer more specific directions to your business or event.
Map widgets are incredibly popular with website-building platforms. Builders such as Duda are responsive, so their map widgets allow you to be flexible in what you wish to add to your maps.
For example, if you’re a travel blog writing a guide to Paris, on a map you may wish to mark up on a map:
- Eiffel Tower
- Louvre
- Arc de Triomphe
- Sacre Coeur
- Notre Dame
- Pompidou Centre
This will add more context and more guidance on how visitors should split out their day as they can understand more firmly how far everything is away from each other. This is just one example, however. Points of interest could vary depending on the type of website you have. For example, food and drink websites may wish to add recommended restaurants or bars to a map.
Highlighting Routes
You can also make routes easier by using map widgets on your site too. This is a particularly good option for sports events. Running events such as marathons, 10ks and triathlons will often integrate maps into their site to show the route.
Users can then engage with the map to delve into the details of the route, from places of interest they’ll go past, to figuring out how many hills they may encounter. Information can also be dropped onto the map, including where drinks and feeding stations will be, as well as being able to see parking in the local area.
It’s not just sporting event websites that can benefit from routing on a map though. You can add trails for walkers, treasure trails, and even things such as pub crawl depending on your website, all better explaining how users can get from A to B.
Add Vital Statistics
More informative sites may use maps integrated into their site to better display information. For example, the video above uses maps to highlight crime in areas.
Using crime as an example, the likes of estate agents, councils, police, and many other sites could use this map and data to more visually make people aware of crime in their area, while maps can be used to display tons of different statistics.
Zap Map integrates maps incredibly effectively to highlight electric charging points in the UK, while you’ll also find maps on sites that show Wi-Fi hotspots, public toilets, and many other amenities and stats.
Think about the information you wish to use on your site, and whether it would be more helpful and engaging for it to be delivered in map form. There are millions of websites online, many of which look the same, but if you can integrate different elements of design, then there’s every chance that a user will be more engaged and more likely to stick around on yours.
