Businesses should not underestimate the power of displaying Google Maps. Google Maps can help a person to find your offices at ease. Actually it should be compulsory for any physical business to display a maps widget on your pages and people will be more keen to visit your physical office just as they visit your website. People use WordPress blog for many reasons like hosting an e-commerce store or providing a job database and in some cases you need to be reporting on other businesses and their whereabouts. In these kind of situations Google maps are very useful. These are invaluable and beneficial to the overall business growth. Also Google Maps allow you to submit your own business listing and in turn providing better local search results when people look for a specific business, like yours, in the area they live in. Google provides a detailed page on how to list your business on their search results.

If you need Google map feature into your WordPress site then When you hire WordPress Developer then you can ask him to add the Google Map Widget plugin also into your WordPress site.

Google Maps Widget

Now we will write a quick review of the Google Maps Widget plugin. The plugin is simply the best mapping tool. Using it you can show your business or store’s location or give people directions or give visitors more information about your site. Google Maps Widget is here for last four years an has now 1,00,000 users. The plugin is simple, intuitive and customizable. You don’t need much technical skills to use it. You just have to enter the location details and customize the look and feel of the map. You can even match the design as per your website. Best thing is that it is very fast and consumes little resources. There are two versions of this plugin available i.e. Free and Pro.

Now we will discuss some of the best features of Google Maps Widget plugin.

Super Fast Loading

During WordPress development of your site you should install only those plugins which are required and are fast as no one wants to add any heavy plugin that will suck up resources from the website. That’s why Google Maps Widget is so useful and popular as it sends only one request. It uses almost no resources. Lets discuss how it works. When the map first loads on your site, it’s just an image. It’s a screenshot which means it is lightweight and only makes one request to the server. The map only becomes interactive when it is clicked. At this point, it drags all extra requests. That means your initial load speed is not slowed down by a heavy plugin on the homepage.

Customizable

You can easily adapt the plugin to blend into your website. You can also change the size of the map and the colors of the lightbox when it expands. The map itself includes the Google Map’s functionality, hence you can choose from their features too. Street view, Satellite view, directions from one place to another – It’s all easily customized in the plugin. You can even include information bubbles, zoom ratio and other aspects, all dragged in from Google Maps.

Regularly Updated

Google Maps plugin is updated regularly. The plugins which are regularly updated are safe, secure and fast. It also means that the team care about their plugin and respond quickly to fix bugs. You are guaranteed the most up-to-date functionality with the Google Maps plugin.

Great Support

The developers behind the Google Maps Widget provide excellent customer support. They aim to reply all the emails within three hours and guarantee a response within 24 hours. Pro members get a year of guaranteed support and you can also upgrade to lifetime support. There is also a very helpful online support forum for free users. In this forums there are many active experts and there is a good community of users answering the questions.

Google Maps Widget in Action

Now lets check out how the plugin looks from behind the scenes. There are so many options for setting up the widget. You can choose the size, map type and pin customization all from one simple form. You can also change the headline or text above and below the map itself and also can customize how the interactive aspect will appear. You can also access the support team from the options screen.

Conclusion

After discussing about the main features we can say that the Google Maps Widget is the best way to add a map to your site. It is very easy to use, blends into your design and won’t slow down your site. You can try it by getting the free version from the WordPress plugin store or the pro version from the Google Maps Widget official site.