The new era and the information age have been surrounding us for years. Companies went online and each day summons new ones which exist purely in the virtual world. Still, millions of business owners all over the world have to show their locations to potential customers. Whether it is a reallocation of a store or it’s just a billing address, it is advised that you have one shown on your website.
With Google Maps, things got much easier. You don’t have to create maps manually, nor you have to know how to code. You can easily embed a map and show your location on the interactive map.
If you are working with WordPress, things get even easier and more fun. We can all thank that to plugins and creative developers who amaze us with features we never dreamt of. Among dozens of Google Maps plugins for WordPress, we would like to accentuate Google Maps Widget for its speed and features list.
First of all, you have to know that Google Maps Widget can be freely downloaded from WordPress plugin repository. The plugin can be installed literally within a minute, and you can have your map customized and embedded within next few minutes or so. By doing so, your business will pop out in a widget area. Your customers will be able to locate you without trouble. If you have ever searched a store or another business on their website. You know how important it is to find a map on the contact page or in the footer of the site.
Google Maps Widget PRO
While you can have the basic map and location pinned with the free version. We would like to show you Google Maps Widget PRO version. This release allows you to pin multiple addresses on the map, and it will extend the plugin with more than 50 extra features! This professional version will provide you with more than 20+ lightbox skins, 15 map skins. There are more than 1500 custom map pins to choose from.
Besides the widget area, the PRO version will generate a shortcode for you which you may use anywhere on the site. You’ll be able to export and import widgets. Clone them, add Google Analytics Events with a click of a button and much, much more while US-based support will take care of all of your questions and potential problems. Make sure that you open the list of all features.
Besides all those extra features which enable you to customize the map in details. Google Maps Widget is the fastest one we used for WordPress. Instead of loading the large interactive map which may slow down any website, GMW renders a thumbnail image of the map.
By doing so, it saves both you and your visitors quite an enormous amount of transferred data. Still, after a user decides to open an interactive map. It can load up quickly in a popup, fullscreen or any other option you choose from the map settings.
Another great thing about the plugin is that it gives you 7 days free trial period. That means that you don’t have to worry about it working on your site or wondering about all of those extra features. Test them out and if you don’t like them, you can still roll-back to an original, free version.
See why Google Maps Widget is better than other plugins.
Have you tried Google Maps Widget? How do you like the plugin? We would love to hear all about it in the comments below!