How to Build an Interactive Map Powered by a Google Sheet

Rob Stark
4 min readOct 28, 2020

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For organizations big and small, interactive maps on websites can be an attractive way to represent data, office areas, or the reach of a special program. They’re effective and appealing, and they’re quick to bring the attention of site visitors.

There are many diverse approaches to embed google maps, but we’ve found that one of the most powerful methods is to use a Google Sheet to control and power the data. This delivers the resulting maps both cost-effective and user-friendly. In this post, we’ll describe how to use a Google Sheet to produce an impressive interactive map.

Developing a Consistent Design and Building the Map Graphic

The design of your interactive maps on websites is an essential factor that will circumscribe much of its final value. If it looks complicated or doesn’t match with the rest of your site, visitors may be less expected to engage with it. According to our idea, we think it is desirable to bring in the organization’s trademark colors, fonts, and shapes to assure a seamless transformation between the map and other site pages. The map is also quite least — only a few shades and an uncomplicated key — which makes it convenient and inherent to explore.

After achieving the design vision, it is time to build the graphic that would resemble the page. To do this, we should obtain an SVG map that could be customized. A Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) is a type of file that can be employed to display shapes, lines, and text online. As it is not based on determining dimensions, it is greatly flexible and won’t become pixelated at bigger sizes. SVGs also work fine with animations, so they’re a comprehensive match for pictures that move.

Setting Up a Google Spreadsheet

Once we have picked and customized the SVG map, we are ready to start developing our Google Sheet to embed Google map. This section of the process will have the most elementary steps. We will now create a Google Sheet that classifies the data into the fields that arise on the interactive map including anything from store locations to project sites. One tremendous benefit of the Google Sheets program is its versatility. Since the fields are added as columns, the company can include as much data as they’d like. For example, an interactive map that reveals office locations could include fields for a phone number, email, hours, address, and other location-specific details. After making certain that the spreadsheet was set to go, then we would furnish data to the SVG map.

Connecting the Map to a Google Spreadsheet

If the map is created by country, we begin the combination by adding all of the country names as pages in our WordPress content management system. Even though the map’s data was truly going to come from the Google Sheet, this was a crucial step because it presented the names that the Sheet data would match up with on the completed map. The country pages also assist the purpose of covering further information about each country. Fill in these pages with all of the associated information associated with that country. This way, map users would be able to effortlessly click a button to learn more about any presented country.

After everything is fit on the CMS side, we will use the Google Sheets API to enter the Sheet data as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). JSON is a file format that replaces data so that it can be read and used by a script.

The ever-helpful Sheets API extracted data from the country spreadsheet into the template, where it then connected through to render the markup for each pop-up on the map. With the integration finished, you can access the Google Sheet at any time to make adjustments that will appear on the interactive map in minutes.

Conclusion

Interactive maps on websites are undeniably compelling tools, but they’re so often characterized by intricate management systems or pricey upkeep fees. By using a Google Sheet to coordinate and inform the map, you can keep costs low and interpret the process for managing your data current.

Ewaantech is the top mobile app development company in Saudi Arabia. If you’re excited about investigating how an interactive map on websites could work for your company’s website, and we’ll work together to find a definite solution for you to embed google map. For now, feel free to drop any questions or feedback in the comments here. reach out to us

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Rob Stark
Rob Stark

Written by Rob Stark

“Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology.”