When and How to Use Maps

Why are you making a map?

What is the purpose of your map, why are you making it? Think of this as an elevator pitch that you can include in a creative brief.

What style of map should it be?

• Do you need to convey just simple distributions, some basic information and links to more online sources?  A Google Map would work for this.
• Or are you needing a richer user experience with images, more contextual explanation? An Esri StoryMap tour or Esri Cascade Map may be the best option.
• Is it to use large volumes of data that we hold in our GIS- again an Esri solution may be appropriate

Who are your intended audience?

Think about who you want to read your story: funders, policy makers, local stakeholders,  specific 'general public' segments, historic environment specialists?

What are the key takeaways or actions for end users?

What do you need your readers to know or do using the map.

Are there follow up action for them afterwards? What do you want someone to do, think, or feel after they’ve finished using ? This can be anything from signing up for our newsletter, to volunteering to Enrich the List, to learning more with another related piece of content.

What content do you have or need to make the map?

Spatial information

As a minimum you will usually need to provide adequate information to place location pins for the heritage you are displaying.

This includes at least one of the following:

• Latitude and longitude if known
• UID numbers and names if for our statutory data such as Listed Buildings
• Place names and post codes

Please note that UK National Grid References (NGRs) cannot be directly used and must be converted to latitude and longitude. There are a number of free websites that will do this.

Useful Websites

LatLong.Net or GridReferenceFinder.com are useful for looking up the coordinates of individual places.

GridReferenceFinder also has a Bulk Convert tool which can convert a large number of coordinates from one format to another.

Other content

• If your map is displaying pop ups with a small set of attributes about each pin, bearing in mind the purpose and target audience of the map, identify what attributes you will need. Keep these short and meaningful.
• If you are needing a story map tour for example, think about media that might be useful for telling the story alongside brief texts that you want your audience to understand, such as photographs or other images. List any media content that you have or need to get that will help support your story.
• At present Esri story maps do not support normal alt text, so to to be accessible to those using assistive technology screen readers, you will need to provide a word picture of what is in any images (see guidance on alt text).
• If you need explanatory text in slides for a story tour style map, this should not exceed 100 words per slide.
• If you are linking to other online content such as reports, registers or databases provide the url addresses.

Building story tour maps for High Street Heritage Action Zones

We have provided step-by-step instructions on building Esri story tour maps for High Street Heritage Action Zones and similar projects.

Go to StoryMaps instructions

For website editors: embedding or signposting the map

Less is more

• Don't cram a given page with too many links to maps or map embeds
• Make the call to action to use the map obvious and clear

Google maps

• Google maps can be directly embedded on our web pages
• There's a dedicated embed component for Google and Esri maps in the Umbraco content management system
• Editors can just paste the URL of the map in the embed component.  

Example of an embedded Google map

This selection of our 'Top 50' Grade I listed buildings with present or past historic associations as pubs or inns includes some buildings that are no longer pubs or that are no longer open to the public.

Esri maps

• You can directly embed an Esri map onto our webpages but whether you actually want to do that will depend on which of the Esri map options you're using and whether it'll work in the smaller space available when embedded within a page
• To embed a map, we paste the full map URL with the map ID into the website's map component 
• If you want the map to open to the full screen, rather than embed it you could simply link from inline text but this is easily overlooked
• You can link from a button
• You can link from a content promotion. This will be more prominent, but should be used sparingly, only one per page.
• Avoid confusing users with supporting 'flat' on-page images derived from the map that might appear to be clickable but are not.

Example of an embedded Esri map

You can see this map in context on the John Laing Collection page.

The map pins mark 40 significant construction sites for the John Laing company. Each pin links through to a set of results for a search of the Historic England Archive for each site.

Example of a content promotion for an Esri interactive map

Example of a call to action button linking to a map

The image above the button however could confuse users into thinking it is the way into the map.​

Interactive map: Stonehenge landscape(opens in a new window)​

Promoting the map and evaluating success

Unless for a very select audience such as MPs, the map is likely to be mounted on a web page, but this is not the end point of the content.

• Depending on the audience, how will we make them aware of the content? Will it be through corporate social media/ practitoner forums?
• How will we measure success of the map? This is likely to be in SMART terms such as views/visits to the pages they're on or for example views of the actual Esri map. Also potentially metrics for linked content such as reports. 

Talk to the Content Team and Digital Communities Team about these factors.