Author: Tom Cottrill | Date Posted: Feb 8, 2022
Many websites that you see when navigating the internet or looking at a business’s physical or service locations have maps on their site. Some of these maps are a stagnant image of the location, but some sites have an interactive map that allow website visitors to click, zoom, move around, and may even have layers for various data sets. Some of these maps allow the visitor to type in their zip code and determine if the company has a location in or services their area. Interactive maps provide many benefits to a website, not the least of which is simply increasing the user experience drastically.
As humans, our brains are visual. Sure, we read content on websites just fine, but the ultimate processing happens visually, especially when it comes to trying to process high amounts of information like a list of locations. Interactive map website plugins can show users the data that best suits their needs without them having to page through a long list of service locations or try to figure out exactly how far that may be from their home. When users can interact with this map, they are able to get their information quicker and in a way that’s clear and concise for them.
One really helpful feature of interactive maps is that they can be designed to show basic location information, along with weather information for that region for services that are weather-dependent, Google Street View to show exactly what each location looks like in case it is difficult to find, and some have even been used to show the wildlife in the area for parks or wildlife foundations. Maps can even show updated information fed from other sites with details like number of members in a location’s membership group or event. Many travel sites use it to show all of a variety of activities within its hotel limits to allow people to easily and visually plan their trip. Apply layers to the map to let planners pick individual activities one at a time or all together so they can go from one to another too!
Maps aren’t just for helping visitors find their way to a location or finding out what areas you serve. They can also help them navigate within a physical location. This is helpful for large stores or malls that can let visitors click around inside of the location to see exactly where certain stores are, including restrooms, restaurants, or bars. This is a good move for resorts and hotels too that are large and offer many services within their walls that may be difficult for people to wander around and find on their own. To avoid frustrating physical visitors, offering this feature on your website can help people easily find their way around and plan their day—or get places a lot quicker (especially if they have to plan where they’re going to park beforehand).
Aside from just drastically enhancing UX on your website (which is in itself great for SEO), adding an interactive map to your website helps with overall search engine optimization of the site as well.
An interactive map website plugin improves user experience for your website, and a part of this is that it allows your website to be more accessible. When a person can interact with a map as they choose, they are able to use it in a way that adheres to their disability or specific needs. This can include simpler features like ensuring areas are clearly marked and able to be navigated around for individuals with color blindness, accessibility in all browsers, an ability to be enlarged to 200% for people to see it more easily, and even ensuring ALT text attributes for vision-impaired individuals who need text-to-voice assistance.
Ever been to a website and tried to navigate their map but can’t move it around to fit your mobile screen properly because it was designed for a desktop. This is not only going to frustrate all your mobile users (which in 2021 was over 54%), but it also hurts your search engine rankings. If a search engine crawls your site and sees that the maps cannot be re-situated to properly fit a mobile device—or one that is unable to be controlled via touch screen—your search engine rankings will start going down, down, down…along with your conversion rate.
Interactive maps have other SEO functions as well, including any external links that may be added, plus the ability to provide more website authority for a site simply by providing lots of relevant information for visitors (like nearby parks and restaurants that are clickable and able to be navigated to). This is not to say that simply having an interactive map on a website will be enough to boost SEO, but it will be a huge helping hand when the rest of your SEO efforts are done right!
Since 2013, Ignitro Studios has been working to blend marketing and technology in support of agencies and other marketers. By understanding both sides of web development, we have a unique perspective and advantage within the industry. We provide design, development, project management, QA, and strategy, driving the bus so our clients don’t have to. We will work with our clients to get results while also empowering them to do their job better. Learn more about Ignitro Studios.
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