An image map is usually a picture (e.g. a photo, a diagram, a chart, or a floor plan) with single or multiple clickable areas. Clicking on these areas will show more information as a pop-up box, or link to other online destinations.

Image maps are creative means for visual navigation of websites. For example, you can import a family tree diagram to show your family relationships. By clicking on each box on the tree would show the bio of your family members, and you can even include links to their own blog or photo galleries. Image maps can also serve as labels for diagrams, such as a graph of human anatomy to show the inner workings of our body systems. One can create such graphs as an image map to add lables for organ names and have descriptive box to describe their function.

Image maps make information on your website more easy to access, which encourage customers to keep coming back to your page and can improve your website's conversion ratio. When people browsing information online, they often respond to visual and interactive elements faster. Image maps helps visitors to find information as they do not need to read lots of text in order to find the page they want. Instead, they look at a self-explanatory image, and click on the item or element which interested them the most. This in turn makes it easier to convert visitors into prospective customers or serious buyers.

How do you turn an image into an image map? In the past, most image maps are coded using HTML, and hot spots are defined by using x and y coordinates. Experienced web developers are able to create image maps by hand, using a simple text editor such as NotePad, however doing so requires that the web developer knows HTML coding and also requires them to know the coordinates of the areas that they wish to place over the image. As a result, most image maps coded by hand are simple polygons and not very useful for business owners who often do not have advance coding knowledge.

Creating image maps in a text editor requires time and effort, there are many applications that allow the web designer to quickly and easily create image maps. One example of these is Dreamweaver which is a commercial software from Adobe Inc., it is a web page editor with built-in image map tools.

In recent years, more and more web developers are using Flash to create image maps, instead of HTML. Creating image maps using Flash is a lot easier, faster, and more powerful. That's because Flash maps have the capability to enable a wide variety of interactive functions including different rollover effects, various pop-up box styles, and zooming. Flash image maps also loads a lot smoother and faster, with better browser compatibility because browsers of all types use the same Flash plug-in from Adobe.

Different from HTML image maps, Flash image maps combine image and script into a single file, which makes it straightforward for web developers to embed into their existing web page without worry about affecting existing scripts. In addition, there are many flash image map software available online which you can find by searching on Google. These software can easily convert your JPG or PNG images into a clickable interactive map with custom defined hot spots, and best of all you can use these software to create interactive maps without any HTML coding or scripting knowledge.