Dawn of a New Era
May 20th, 2008
It’s now just over a year since we launched the ‘new’ version of multimap.com, which included a complete re-design of the user interface and took advantage of the latest browser technology to offer a rich user experience with a wide range of new features. Never a company to take its user loyalty for granted, we have continued to run the old site alongside the new one for those users who were not ready to move to the new site just yet.
Today heralds the start of another chapter at Multimap as we retire the ‘old’ site and move forward to embrace the next era of online mapping.
The end of an era always brings with it some reflection and, when I was thinking about what to write in this blog, I couldn’t help getting nostalgic. The ‘old’ site was once our ‘new’ site too and ran for several years generating enormous user growth due to its great features. It too, was replacing an ‘old’ site (an ‘old, old’ site if you like) and, in fact that site (the ‘old, old’ one) was replacing the original prototype that Sean, our founder, quite literally wrote in his spare room!
That was in 2000, and I was Multimap’s second employee who had joined in December of the previous year (in case you are wondering, Employee #1 - Karl - is still with Multimap). Looking at www.archive.org at a snapshot of the site back then, what stands out for me is the “nostalgic for the old site” link, which took you back to the original prototype. Even in those very early days we were mindful of our users’ feelings and respectful of the time that you invested in us. It would be foolish therefore not to build upon the legacy of the old site, bringing along all that is good about it as we continue to move forwards.
Just as we did 8 years ago, we’ve spent the last year listening to our customers and their feedback on what they like about our new site and what they preferred about the old. We hope we have incorporated the best of that feedback and addressed most of those concerns in the last year, and that the features of the new site represent a positive step for you.
In particular, we have focused on making the site simpler to use, and worked to improve many of the tools and features.
We have also remained true to our goal of leaving no users behind by trying to offer everyone the most usable service, especially for those using older computers and low-bandwidth Internet connections, such as dial-up. Back in April we quietly released a new ‘basic‘ version which hopefully offers the best of both worlds: many of the new and exciting features of the new site, larger maps and your choice of map styles, but with the ability to support older computers and users who do not have broadband. Since its release, the ‘basic’ version has been well received, so we’d like to talk a little bit more about it…
The ‘basic’ site has all of the maps you tell us you prefer, from the well-known Harper Collins street atlases to Ordnance Survey Landranger maps (if you don’t see the map you prefer, click on the arrow to the right of the “map” button on the map itself and you’ll see a list of available map types). The ‘basic’ site is just another view of our new site, which means that you can share links from it with your friends and family irrespective of whether they use the ‘basic’ or the ‘interactive’ version of the site. You can see the ‘basic‘ version by visiting the new site and clicking on the ‘basic maps’ link above the map. To return to the ‘interactive‘ version, just click ‘interactive maps’, which is also above the map.
We’ve also made other performance improvements, which has included changes to how we display content from our advertising partners.
By closely listening to our users, and responding accordingly, we have seen a steady migration of users from the old site to the new over the past year, just as they did in 2000. Visits to the old site have now dropped to levels where we feel the time is right to invest all our energy into our new site.
For those of you who haven’t yet tried out the new site, then allow us to highlight just some of the new features you might find useful:
Draggable Maps and Aerial Images
No more waiting for the page to load when you want to move the map with our ‘interactive’ version - just use your cursor to “grab” the map and “drag” it. Want to zoom in? Simple, just double-click the map or use the zoom control in the top-right-hand corner of the map. Click the ‘Aerial’ button to view fantastically detailed aerial images, courtesy of Microsoft Virtual Earth.
Bird’s Eye
Bird’s Eye images let you see the world from a unique new perspective. They are taken from low-flying aircraft with 4 high-resolution cameras facing north, south, east and west, which means that, in addition to the top-down aerial view, you can view buildings at a 45-degree angle from 4 directions. Bird’s Eye images are available on our ‘interactive’ version for many major cities around the world – and we’re adding new locations every month. John has also written an excellent blog about it.
Local Information
Explore your location before you travel. Use the “Useful Information” palette on our ‘interactive version’ to display cashpoints, railway stations, car parks and even Wikipedia articles on our maps.
Find a business
Now you can use our maps to find businesses in your area – or your destination. We’ve got details of everyone from accountants to woodworkers in the UK, US, Canada, France and Italy – with other countries coming soon.
Improved travel directions
We now offer you walking directions as well as driving directions; the ability to route between points of interest, as well as between addresses; and directions for even more countries. We also give separate maps for the start and end points as well as for your full journey.
Making a major decision such as this is never something we take lightly, irrespective of how quickly technology - and the mapping market - moves forwards.
For all those who embrace change and enjoy discovering new features and content, we know there are those who find these kinds of changes harder to accept, and we’re completely realistic that not all users may be happy with this change.
All we can ask is that you give our new site a chance, and keep talking to us, whatever your feedback.
You can drop us a line at: info@multimap.com
May 21st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I’m sorry, but what a dreadful new ’service’.
Maps take ages to load, can’t be zoomed in and out using the old numerical scale drop-down list and don’t print on a single page.
It would have been hard to make the new version worse.
I was a regular user of the old site, but I can’t see me finding the time to slog my way through the process in future.
A great shame as it was one of the most useful aspects of the net.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Have to agree 110% with Stuart, what a hugh step backwards. This well, supposedly ‘new service’ is totally featureless and non-informative, no land marks or features, no road numbers, etc. The location requested differed considerably from the location given by this ‘new service’ by several miles. Bring back the O.S. Map.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Hello Stuart/Ray
Thanks for your feedback and sorry that you are not completely happy with the new site. As we discussed, a change like this is never something we take lightly, so I’d like to try to address each of your issues:
OS Maps:
OS maps are still here!!! We wouldn’t dream of taking them away (although, much like Marmite, users tell us they either love them or hate them!). We’ve made the OS maps available across Great Britain, at three different zoom levels: 13, 14, and 15. These maps come from OS 1:50,000 Landranger series. Here’s an example (http://www.multimap.com/maps/?lat=54.476117&lon=-3.10924&mapData=841). You can switch between the OS maps and our other map styles, by clicking on the arrow next to the “Maps” button on the map (NOTE: The arrow will only display if there is more than 1 map style available for the area you’re looking for).
Performance:
We’ve tried to strike the right balance between performance and features as the 2 don’t always go hand in hand. It’s disappointing to hear that its slow for one of our regular users, as we constantly monitor performance, on a variety of connections and browser types. Without knowing your exact set-up, it is difficult to know why you are experiencing slow maps, but if you would be so kind as to email our customer support team with details including machine, browser and how you access the internet, broadband or dial-up, we can investigate this further with you: info@multimap.com.
We also created the ‘basic maps’ site, which like our old site, supports older computers and users who do not have broadband. We’d be interested to know which version of the site you’re using.
Numerical scale drop down and zoom bars:
When we designed our new site, we wanted to be able to deliver seamless maps of the world, that could be panned and zoomed easily, without necessarily making users step through different scales or layers. We also offered 18 different levels of zoom for our maps (even more for Aerial), as opposed to the previous 10. To do that, we had to make changes in the zoom and scale functions which means it isn’t relevant to show a drop-down fixed scale list, as the scale varies dependant on how far from the equator you are. If you are interested in a fuller explanation, please see our FAQ on it: http://www.multimap.com/help/#aq658
Map printing on two pages instead of one:
We hold our hands up to this one Stuart….it’s a good old fashioned bug in the code ! A fix has been created and it will be released to the site hopefully this week. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.
Once again, thanks for your feedback and I hope that you will continue to visit Multimap.com
Soraya
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I used old site for many years with ease.It did what its supposed to.I think ,as do others who I always suggeted using multimap,that the new map is not intuitive,……………wheres advanced search?wheres drop down easy to use ratio?Why does my printer use 2 sheets in printer friendly mode?
None of these questions were an issue before!!!
Sorry to say I`m not a fan of your new site.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Jon - the advanced search feature has now gone away, as you can enter all the items that used to be available in, and much more into the single line search box.
You can enter addresses, areas, post codes, landmarks, co-ordinates and even OS Grid References (http://www.multimap.com/maps/?q=TQ306799&countryCode=GB)
Soraya mentioned above that we’ve had to remove the fixed list of scales, as we wanted to deliver seamless maps of the world, and to do this we use a map projection where the scale varies as you move away from the equator. 1:25000 at the equator, is more like 1:10000 by the time you get to Scotland. If you’re using our interactive maps site, you can quickly go directly to a given zoom level by grabbing the bar on the zoom control, and dragging it up or down.
Hope this helps
May 26th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Hi all,
Any plans to offer bicycle navigation?
Thanks!
May 26th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The new map site is awful!! I used the old one regularly and it gave the miles travelled at each junction so if not sure I could always find out where I was by the miles travelled!! Takes too much room to print out - bitty and not well thougth out - will have to use another site from now on - pity as it was great!
May 27th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I agree with the comments, the new site is a huge leap in the wrong direction, I find it almost impossible to use.
I used the old site whenever I needed a map, for work or home. I tried using the new one, but repeatedly had to return to the old.
In future I will use google maps, which isnt as convenient as the old site but at least lets me find what I want
May 27th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
In response to Soraya Crowley’s reply to my earlier comment:-
1. Thanks for the quick response, it’s good to see you are monitoring the feedback.
2. I don’t think I used to used the OS maps before - I just need to find a location and found the 10,000 scale ideal for the precise road/street detail, and the 50,000 usually gave me the surrounding area information leading to the precise location. Unless I’m doing it wrong, I find I can’t jump about on the current zoom function, instead I have to tediously go from one zoom point to the next, and wait for each map to load in-between - I just don’t have that time to waste.
3. I’m on broadband 2.2, so not that good a connection, but is the site slow because of what now appear to be a much greater number of adverts, most of which seem to be flashing away, and asking me if I want this, that or the other?
I understand adverts fund the service, but as I’ve already switched over to Google Maps and removed the Multimap link from my toolbar, if I don’t see any of your adverts because the site doesn’t meet my needs, then more equals less for Multimap in the end.
I’m sorry if I sound like a ‘Luddite’ (or Ross from ‘Friends’ - “Nobody likes change”), but from a selfish point of view, the old site did exactly what I wanted in a straightforward and easy to use way. I don’t need to know what the weather is like at the location I’m looking for - as I’m working, I’m going to have to go there whether it’s raining or not!
I just want the map I need, quick and easy.
Stuart Neal
May 28th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Unfotunately for Multimap, I totally agree with the above comments about the backwards quality leap from the old site to the new one.
Especially with the map navigation tools “à la Google” which are the worst ones !
I think you should at least leave a link to access the old fellow site which was doing its job perfectly…