Over the past few months, we’ve been approached a few times about creating interactive world maps or global presence maps. It seems as if as fully functional Google’s mapping engine is, many corporations are looking for something a bit more specific for their needs. There are two main challenges that we have been asked to conquer:

• Create a map that the client can update without the need to know HTML or Adobe Flash / Action Script
• Create a map that suits a specific information need (for example allow overlays to be turned on and off)

vOfficeware’s NonprofitCMS team has developed a turn key WordPress map plugin that is available at a low cost here. This map plugin contains lessons learned throughout the development of numerous projects for our clients. This map allows a non-technical user to add/edit points on the globe and displays a block of custom metadata. We believe this map can save thousands of dollars in development and serve the purposes for 80% of firms out there. For the other 20%, we’ve reviewed a handful of maps that are out there to give you an idea of what can be done.

World Wildlife Foundation
The WWF’s map is spectacular on all fronts. The zoomed out view displays a hybrid of natural boundaries with political ones while emphasizing the regions in which the WWF works.

The legend it self turns on / off regions of overlays, rather than just points. Each of these regions can be hovered on to display tool tips and clicked on to achieve a zoomed in view.

The zoomed in view displays the same level of artistry and function as the highest level map. It has the same clickable menu, same over effects, and same visual indicators to show the visitor the maximum impact of the map.

This map is worth a look: http://wwfmaps.org/

This map is the epitome of perfection on many angles. It has a robust interface to the end user and it is seamless to update for the administrators. As new information and images are presented they can be loaded via a content management system to display. Each map screen has 3 layers of overlay drawn by an artist, and there are approximately 20 “scenes” within the map. Add it all up and that is 60 custom components on this map with about 600 special overlays and points. This map is quite crucial to demonstrating the depth and reach of the WWF, as such it makes sense for them to have budgeted for a top of the line map presentation.

Odopod
Odopod has taken a different take on presenting directions to its customers. They’ve made their entire contact page into a map! While this has a lot of artistic value, it’s also extremely effective ad disseminating information without forcing the customer to take a separate action.

This map is powered by jQuery rather than Adobe Flash.  Each tooltip point on hover displays a real-life image to give the visitor some true perspective.  Odopod’s map is static, in that additional tooltips can only be added by a skilled technician.  This was done to save on development costs, after all – brick and mortar visual cues will not be changing often enough to warrant a flexible system.

Odopod’s map can be seen here: http://odopod.com/contact/

GOOD Feature
A fun map used for a feature in Good magazine shows the continents in a skewed manner.  Here a visitor can explore the paths taken by famous voyagers.  The map is highly interactive.

The map presents a story using a variety of tooltips, visual cues, and zooming.

As with the Odopod map, this map requires a technical user to make updates.  There is a heavy amount of customization and special zooming that would have been cost prohibitive to develop in order to be truly effective.

Nevertheless, this is a great map and another one worth a gander: http://awesome.good.is/features/011/Wanderlust/index.html

Teaching Jobs Portal
The Teaching Jobs Portal map presents another effective use of mapping right on its home page.  The map displays each state with a color indicating the demand for teachers – red being the ones with the most demand.  As the visitor hovers over, he or she can see specific demands and can click for more information.  While this is going on the demand meter is oscillating back and forth to give an additional sense of interactivity.

This map does not require technical personnel to update.  As a matter of fact – it doesn’t require human talent either!  Data is fed into this map automatically and in turn color coding and hover text is updated without further intervention.

Take a look: http://teachingjobsportal.com/

Conclusion

There are a lot of great uses for custom maps out there however, we feel that between our turnkey map plugin and Google Maps, most organizations can have a map on their website that is both effective and attractive.  If your organization is looking for a world map, there is no stronger value than either of these options.

However, if your organization needs custom or very artistic work a custom designed map is likely the best option, albeit more expensive.