Once in a while, you may have a web design customer ask specifically about responsive Google Maps. Now if you’re already familiar with Duda’s platform, you’ll know its professional-grade website builder comes with a fantastic responsive map widget powered by Mapbox. We love Mapbox because it allows for easy integration into mobile and online applications, and is highly adaptable to new map designs and layouts. Not to mention, it has great global coverage.
That said, if a Google Map is required for a project, you’re still covered. Duda’s flexible platform enables you to easily add nearly any kind of map you and your customers would like to use.
With this in mind, we decided to produce this in-depth guide to help you navigate the sometimes tricky world of Google Maps with ease, offering up all the options available as well as details as to why you may use them…
A LITTLE ABOUT GOOGLE MAPS
More than 150 million users access Google Maps monthly. Adding a responsive Google Maps widget can help consumers locate your customers’ businesses, gives credibility to their organizations, and improves the overall user experience. Embedding a map on your site can also reduce the bounce rate and helps with your search engine optimization efforts.
Google Maps are interactive by default, and Google makes it easy to integrate them into websites. However, Google Maps are not responsive by default, which means it doesn’t automatically resize based on the device screen size. Additional programming is needed to make automatic resizing possible.
Do you have to pay for Google Maps to put it on a website? Yes and no. Basic embedding is free and includes a simple view, a map pin, and your business information.For more complex functions, however, a fee is attached. For example, in order to display multiple locations or implement more advanced features like Google Street View , finding routes, and searching places, Google starts charging once usage quotas are reached.
If you’re interested, click here to learn more about how Google API billing works. Otherwise, let’s talk about working with responsive Google Maps.
WHY INTEGRATE GOOGLE MAPS INTO MY WEBSITE?
One of the first questions you may have is why would you want to integrate Google Maps into your website in the first place. Well, there are actually many reasons, and while it will increase credibility, as we’ve already stated, it can also boost your site in many other areas too. This could include:
Enhancing your contact page
For the most part, websites will use Google Maps on their contact page in order to highlight where their physical locations are. This adds a little more context for those who potentially want to visit the location, with roads, routes and local landmarks all visible.
Highlighting routes
It may be that you want to highlight a particular route on Google Maps. There are many reasons for this, from hiking or running routes to telling a story of a particular journey, which is especially useful for travel sites and blogs.
Store locators
Alongside highlighting your physical location, eCommerce businesses can effectively integrate Google Maps into their site on store locator pages, which highlights the nearest stockists of a particular product or brand.
There are of course many other reasons too. Their aim is simple, to provide a visual overlay of the information you’re trying to get across, and with Google looking more and more for in-depth and useful features within the pages it ranks, it can be an excellent way to meet a user’s search intent.
HOW DO I EMBED GOOGLE MAPS INTO MY WEBSITE?
Embedding Google Maps in any website can be done in a variety of ways. A novice can handle most of the code, although some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is helpful. Google provides the code and there are several ways to embed responsive Google Maps into any website using Iframes. In this post we will address several DIY methods by describing step-by step-procedures on how to embed responsive maps in any website platform, including Duda and others.
GOOGLE MAPS INTEGRATION USING SIMPLE IFRAME CODE EMBED FROM GOOGLE
One of the best ways to integrate Maps into your site is with an Iframe code. It’s the simplest way, especially if you aren’t too clued up on website building. Below you’ll find full information on how to copy the Google embed code from Google Maps into a site’s HTML code. No other code of formatting is applied or required.
Obtain a Google embed code
- Go to Google Maps
- Enter the business address in the search bar, then click the search button
- Click on the Share icon
- Choose “Embed map”
- Select the size of the map from the drop down
- Select and copy the HTML iframe embed code
https://blog.duda.co/responsive-google-maps-for-your-website