You’ve built an interactive map, added content, organized the data, and customized its appearance. Your map looks great and now you’re ready to add it to your website.
This guide offers the best practices for integrating an interactive map into a website, drawn from over 5 years of experience assisting thousands of businesses and organizations going live with their map on their website.
While some of the tips and tricks we provide are specific to interactive maps created with Mapme, the majority apply to maps created with any interactive map builder.
Who is your map’s target audience?
Many businesses and organizations develop interactive maps for internal use. However, a significant portion of maps are crafted with the general public in mind. It is also crucial to determine whether your map will be primarily accessed via desktop or mobile devices.
These considerations will significantly influence how you should integrate your map into your website.
How to maximize your interactive map usage?
For most public-facing scenarios, the objective is to maximize the utilization of your interactive map. Here are the central factors that can influence your interactive map’s usage:
- Map exposure – How easily can your audience find your map?
- Map interface – How user-friendly is your map?
Maximize your map exposure
This is all about location:
- Embed your map on your homepage or another frequently visited page on your website.
- Position the map “above the fold” to ensure it is immediately visible.
- Incorporate a link to your map in your main navigation menu.
Placing your map in the best spot is key, but there are other easy ways to make sure more people see your map:
- Promote it – When you first launch, show off your new interactive map with a small banner or pop-up on your homepage.
- Newsletters – Include a fresh screenshot of the map in newsletters to your customers.
- Share it on social media – With Mapme, you can quickly share your map on social platforms or through email.
Optimize your interactive map usability
This is all about size. Aim to have your map fill as much of the user’s screen viewport (the visible area on the web page) as possible. Ideally, opt for a full-width embed. Simultaneously, ensure that users don’t need to scroll excessively to see the entire map.
Mapme’s embed code is optimized to control the height based on the viewport for a variety of devices, from large desktop screens to smaller mobile displays. Moreover, Mapme offers a fully responsive design, ensuring the best experience across all screen sizes — be it on desktop, tablet, or mobile devices.
Here is a great example of a full-page embed that integrates seamlessly with other page elements, such as the navigation menu.
Small embed area
In some instances, there may be constraints outside of your control that limit the available space for embedding the map on your website.
If you find yourself in this situation, we recommend enabling a full-screen view of the map on both mobile and desktop devices. This approach ensures that users will have the best possible experience with your interactive map.
Mapme offers a feature that allows you to control when the map automatically expands to full screen.
Here is an example of a map embedded in a small area. When the user first interacts with the map, it opens full screen.
Embed different views of your map
Sometimes, putting your map in various places on your website can be really useful. For instance, if your map has information for different industries, why not put it on the specific pages for each industry on your site?
You can customize the map embeds to showcase the most relevant view. You can designate a specific category or location to be highlighted when the map initially loads on your webpage. Just update the direct URL for the chosen category or location within the iframe tag.
You can also create different versions of your interactive map, selecting the categories that will be visible. This allows for a customized viewing experience based on the focus of different web page sections.
Test your interactive map embed
We have developed a tool to facilitate the testing of your map embed. Simply enter the map URL and specify the dimensions for the embed to preview what your map will look like when embedded. Check it out.
Customize your map to your brand
Before embedding your map on your website, you want to ensure that it matches your company’s or organization’s brand, as well as the general look and feel of the website.
Want to learn more about map branding? See this excellent guide on How to customize your map to match your brand.
Here is an example of a map where the look and feel match the company’s brand.
Questions about embedding your interactive map?
If you need help to embed your map, check out our embed guide. Don’t hesitate to contact the support team.