Drawing maps has never been a job for many people, except when we studied geography at school. But everything changes, especially when we talk about technology applied to business.
Not many years ago, just few privileged professionals could have an ArcGIS license, a software product that allows capturing, editing, analyzing, designing, publishing and printing geographic information. Nowadays, these limits don’t exist anymore, as new platforms that allow us to transform a database into funny and useful maps (which helps to improve the user’s experience) emerge at an extraordinary pace.
If we talk about tradeshows and events, the production of interactive maps for Internet has become a very useful tool for both companies and users. ¿How many times have we entered in a website and thought that its design was too serious or limited? So, the geolocalization maps are the solution to this problem!
To begin with, these maps can offer the information that the company want to transmit to users or potential clients in much more visual, funny and clear way.
On the second hand, geolocalization maps also encourage collaborative work: some websites allow users to add other useful informations to maps. When it comes to trade shows, for example, users could add information about recent or unknown exhibitions that the site doesn’t have, and help increasing the database. And of course: this is a great way to highlight the most recent information, that would be found in a map, on the website’s homepage.
Finally, another characteristic that we can underline is their independence from the operating system; this means that we can see and use an interactive web map through different platforms (such as a PC, smartphone or tablet), that it always stay the same!
Some platforms that can help you to create custom maps
- CartoDB: evolving as an independent company in 2014, this platform offers many geographic information systems and other tools to create high quality maps. It is quite easy to use: you just have to create a table or import an archive and the system automatically recognizes where’s the geographic information. After that, the sites will offer you a lot of options to design your map. Some of the advantages: all the process is made on the website (you don’t have to download anything!), it is easy to use and enables you to explore guides or maps made by other users to solve any doubt.
- Mapbox: the best feature of this app is not its geographic information - because it comes from external sources - but its ability to introduce it: it has plenty of designs for map’s indicators, animations and options to choose the best route between two places, according to the traffic or land conditions.
- Tableau Public: this is probably the best platform for you to start with, specially if you’re not very skilful when it comes to technologies, or if you don’t need a very complex map. With Tableau Public, you just have to upload your database, set the latitude and longitude information and it’s all done! You will have a simple but elegant map.
These tools can be useful for any sector, however, they are especially handy for events. Those working in events and tradeshows know how crucial it is to make a good impression and surprise the audience, and web mapping is the ultimate solution for that annoying or outdated appearance that every company wants to avoid...
Even though commercial fairs and big events still don’t use webmapping much, we believe that this is a very practical way to collect and visualize the participation results. If interactive maps can produce a powerful trafficof information around the world, imagine what it could do when applied to a local territory or a specific event…!