As you may already know, Hexagon is a premier partner for both Google Maps and Google Cloud. We help you discover new ways to change how the world moves. In this blog, you can learn about what’s next for Google Maps and how businesses like yours can create new paths with machine learning, insights from data, and more.
The Google platform has released new features so you can customize Google Maps for your customer interactions. Below are just some of the benefits you’ll see from the additions.
Local Context
Local Context is a session-based deployment of Places API that provides a user experience similar to public Google Maps for exploring an area to find specific, nearby places. This feature introduces a simple way to add Google local information to your personal business’ maps. The turnkey experience lets you show accurate details for nearby places so users can see ratings, reviews, photos, and directions without ever leaving your web app. Plus, you can customize it to fit your business.
This is a great feature to allow your customers who might be traveling to see all the benefits and offerings of your community. Try the demo and see for yourself!
Several options are available to help your customers make faster decisions:
- Show only relevant place types to your customers
- Select how many of each place type is revealed to your customers and how many total places you want to show on your map
- Change the look and feel of your map to match your web app by customizing the colors of place pin icons and the positions of key UI elements
- Enable customers to see ratings, reviews, photos, prices, and more simply by tapping a pin or photo
- Show estimated walking time and directions to points of interest when a customer clicks on a pin or a photo
Maps Customization
Maps Customization is an enhanced toolset for easily creating and publishing custom styled maps that fit your business’ needs, but also use Google’s underlying data. This includes code-free styling tools as well as managing a variety of differently styled maps in Google’s cloud. Try the demo and see for yourself!
This feature allows your customers to use new styling tools to create a custom map of any location you choose, and it’s easy to publish updates across all devices and platforms.
The advantages of customization include:
- More styling features to help your business stand out
- Stylize maps in the Cloud Console and manage them without ever touching a line of code
- Deploy map updates in real time across all platforms and devices
- Through the Cloud Console, easily make seamless updates and provide a consistent customer experience
- Choose the types of businesses customers see on your map with Business POI Filtering
- Five new business categories help narrow down points of interest on your map and show your customers only the most helpful information
- Decide how many points of interest to show on your map with POI Density Control
- Dial up the categories your customers care most about and dial down less relevant ones
- Create sharper, clearer maps thanks to vector graphics that won’t pixelate, enabling smooth navigation with Vector Maps for JavaScript
Why Choose Hexagon as a Premier Partner?
We have over a decade of experience as a Google partner, with more than 300 active customers. We leverage our deep understanding of use cases across many industries to provide the right solutions for your business. Our commitment sets us apart because attentive account management professionals and a skilled engineering team provide technical assistance, consumption optimization, and prompt availability. Contact us today, and let our winning combination grow your business!
