MapNTL.com - Nigeria’s version of Google Maps
If you try using Google maps to search for a business location, street, or hotel in Lagos, Nigeria you’re most likely not going to find any useful information. No kidding! Even though Google has very interesting satellite imageries of Lagos and Nigeria, the internet search giant really has no intelligence to support a simple search ultimately useful to the Nigerian environment.
MapNTL.com, Nigeria’s foremost online interactive map allows users to search for any street by name e.g Ilupeju Bye-Pass Road, Ilupeju or the location of any business by name, e.g Intercontinental Bank, Tejuosho Street, Surulere. With MapNTL, you can zoom in and see more details at street level and even get driving directions to any business from any street in Lagos.
Thus, if you as a customer are looking for the nearest Tantalizers on a particular street in the Lagos Island, you can use MapNTL to find the location. Something you cannot do using Google Map or Yahoo Map.
With MapNTL, you can:
- Search for any street in Lagos
- Search for the nearest hotel, restaurant, bank, ATM and school to any street Search for any Business by name
- Reduce search radius to an area in Lagos
- Get driving direction to your business from any street in Lagos
- Save or print your searches and use them while driving.
Last Saturday, I had a long chat with Anthony Lawrence of MapNTL.com who let me test the service and the interesting features of MapNTL. He showed me how the site works and how you can use it to find locations as well as driving directions within Lagos. Since I was in Abuja at the time, I was shown how to get to Calabar using the nationwide driving directions of MapNTL.
Map above shows driving directions from Abuja to Calabar
Map above shows Ozumba Mbadiwe Street in Victoria Island, Lagos
The site also has functunalities such as ‘zoom in’, ‘zoom out’, and ‘identify’ tools that allows you to see your locations better and clearer. Also the identify tool helps you find the information about a specfic business or sales outlet. Once you get to a map, you can zoom to get a business logo (tantalizers, for instance), then you click on the ‘identify’ tool and the logo to find information about the company or outlet on the right hand side of the page (just outside the map). Totally awesome!
Map above shows driving directions from Tantalizers in Shipeolu Street (Shomolu) to Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja.
A Mapvertising Platform Launched
MapNTL.com has also launched an innovative map-based advertising platform that allows companies in Lagos to advertise their brands on an interactive map. The concept uses a geographic map as a powerful tool in localising advertising by pinpointing a business location on an interactive map using specific company logo or symbol with associated information displayed via the mouse-click function.
This provides a medium for businesses in Lagos to show their corporate locations - hotels, petrol stations, shops, Banks, ATMs, restaurants - and local advertising - directly on an interactive map using their campaign logo.
MapNTL.com has a unique user-base of over 50,000 and more than 100,000 page impressions in August 2008 making it one of the most visited websites in Nigeria. With over 10 million internet users in Nigeria, I think that this service would help businesses connect better with their customers.
How does it work?
When companies take advantage of MapNTL.com’s mapvertising offer of N4,499.99 per location, their corporate logos or customised pictures are used to mark the location of their businesses on an interactive map thereby making it very easy for MapNTL.com users to identify their location and increases the likelihood that they will visit their stores, offices, etc.
Your logo pinpoints your business location making it easy for your new customers to know where you are located. Map users can zoom in or out to see street level details including the location of your business. Maps can be sent as a link in an email to customers, colleagues and friends.
My take on this site
I totally digg this innovation from MapNTL, particularly because maps are great tools for finding locations, businesses, offices, etc and besides Nigeria is well overdue for an interactive map-based yellow page.
With regards to pricing, I feel that N5,000 (about $45 USD or £30) per location is meagre compared to the millions of naira companies spend on advertisements that hardly provide customers with map directions to offices or outlets.
Awesome!
Hey Loy you are right, this http://www.mapntl.com is unbeliable!! I saw Mr Biggs on Iju Rd (very close to my mother-in-law’s street) on the website. What was really great about the website is that Mr Biggs’ location was marked by its distinctive logo, men, you simply cant miss it, fantastic!!! I had never seen anything like this before in Nigeria. I could easily make out the locations of Zenith Bank, UBA, Oceanic Bank, Tantalizers, Tastee Fried Chicken, FCMB, ETB, Skye bank, etc by just searching for their logos on the map-awesome!!
Hey Loy, by the way, i noticed that you can generate the map and then send it in an email right from mapntl.com’s website. I sent one to myself and it just contained a link to the map i generated earlier with all the interactive tools to zoom in and out. Suddenly i thought this could be really useful to small businesses who have just one single location and wish to include a link to mapntl.com. All they have to do is simply to generate the map showing their street on http://www.mapntl.com and save it as a Jpeg image. Then use the saved image on their own websites under the “how to find us” link and conviniently create a link to http://www.mapntl.com. That way, they will ensure that their customers never miss their location. Kudos guys, please keep up the good work? Hey by the way, when will this service be extended to other cities like Abuja and PH?
I’ve used MapNTL a couple of times and I’m impressed with what Anthony has done with this service. It can only get better and I believe there’s a lot of potential for improvement.
There’s something equally interesting happening with Google Maps. There’s a new project called Google Mapmaker which encourages people with knowledge of the geographic topology to make edits and tag buildings, roads and other features. Nigeria is one of the countries that edits can currently be made on and there are quite a number of edits going on daily on the service. You might want to check what they have at http://www.google.com/mapmaker.
The availability of APIs makes the potential humongous for third-party applications. I hope MapNTL could create APIs that will make it possible to create mashups using their service.
Loy, this mapntl.com is really cool. i just searched for Zenith bank on Tejuosho St and it showed! There is something i need to know though, is this N5,000 a one-off payment? I mean how long will my company logo stay displayed on the map after paying the N5,000 per location?
@Everyone - I personally use MapNTL to locate contacts and clients in Nigeria. Every business in Nigeria should endeavour to use the Mapvertising service to attract new customers.
@Joy - I have forwarded your request to Anthony. Thanks for visiting:-)
Hi Joy, the N4,499.99 per location will give a company the opportunity to have its corporate logo or compaign picture mark its business location for one month. However new clients will have their logo displayed for additional 1month free. New Mapvertising customers also stand the chance of winning a Satellite Navigation unit loaded with over 120 city maps at street level across Nigeria.
I LIKE the idea of the site, but i am not sure if it is only me i kept trying to type in the name of a street or business and nothing types in
Hi Quam, MapNTL.com is presently optimised for Internet Explorer, because over 90% of our users use IE we however are currently working on making it FireFox compactible.
[...] MapNTL, Nigeria’s version of Google Maps has launched an online ad network that allows members to join, host ads and get paid. MapNTL.com provides online local and brand advertisers with an interactive medium for delivering geo-targeted and contextual display ads to a large, actively engaged user community. [...]