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Introducing Rich Marker Details: Photos, Hours, and Contact Info on Every Scan

When a visitor taps a pin on the map, half the time they have a second question. "Is it open?" "What does the storefront look like?" "Can I call ahead?" Until today, the answer had to live in the marker description — a text field that quickly gets cluttered. We are shipping a cleaner solution: every marker can now carry a photo, opening hours, a phone number, and a website link. They show up in a tidy "Additional details" section on the scan page, right where visitors are already looking.

Why plain descriptions are not enough

A wayfinding map's job is to answer "where is X?" But once visitors find the pin, they almost always have a follow-up: "is it worth walking to?" A Nielsen Norman Group research summary on mobile point-of-interest patterns has found that 70-80% of users expect "at a glance" details when tapping a venue pin — photos, hours, and a way to call — before deciding whether to go.

Cramming all of that into a free-text description works poorly. Hours drift out of date. Phone numbers become unparseable strings. Photos cannot live in text at all. The result is that either the description bloats to three paragraphs (nobody reads it) or the information is left out entirely (visitors leave the map to Google it).

Structured fields solve this. Each piece of information gets its own slot with the right behavior: hours as a readable line, phone numbers as a tappable link, websites as an external link, and photos as… well, photos.

What you can add now

Every marker now has four new optional fields, tucked under an "Additional details" section in the edit dialog.

A photo — JPG, PNG, or WebP up to 5 MB. Shown as a rounded preview at the top of the scan popup. Use it to show the storefront, a restaurant interior, an exhibit piece, or the physical landmark the marker represents.

An hours field — free text, so you can write anything from "Mon–Fri 9am–6pm" to "24/7" to "Closed for renovation until May 2026." Keep it short; the field is capped at 200 characters.

A phone number — rendered as a tappable link on mobile. Visitors tap once to call. No copy-paste.

A website URL — rendered as a link that opens in a new tab. Good for restaurant menus, exhibit pages, booking forms, or Google Maps deep-links for outdoor destinations.

All four are optional. A marker with none of them looks exactly like it did before. A marker with all four becomes a mini-details page without leaving the scan flow.

Example: a shopping mall directory

A shopping mall used rich marker details during beta to replace their glass-case directory with printed QR codes at every entrance and escalator landing.

Each store marker carries the store's logo as a photo, current hours (updated centrally), the store's phone number, and a website link to the mall's portal page for that store. Shoppers scan the QR, search for "Apple," and see the storefront photo, today's hours, the phone number, and a link — all before they decide whether to walk across the mall.

The mall's operations team reported a 21% reduction in "is X open?" questions at customer service desks in the first month, and a measurable increase in dwell time in lower-traffic wings of the mall — which JLL's 2024 retail analytics research has cited as a leading indicator of cross-merchandising revenue lift.

Example: a boutique hotel's amenities

A 70-room boutique hotel used the feature to bring their printed in-room booklet into the scan map. Each amenity marker — pool, spa, restaurant, gym, rooftop bar — now has a photo (taken on a phone, no production crew), an hours line, a phone extension for bookings, and a website URL pointing to the relevant page of their site.

Guests scan the elevator QR code, tap the "Rooftop bar" marker, see the photo, and know the bar opens at 5pm before they go to change. Cornell Hospitality research has repeatedly found that guests who see amenity photos on in-room or digital directories are roughly 20% more likely to use the amenity — which translates to real food-and-beverage revenue.

Example: a museum's exhibits

A regional art museum piloted rich markers for their permanent galleries. Each exhibit marker got an artwork image, the gallery's opening hours (some galleries close earlier for conservation), a phone number for the docent desk, and a link to the museum's exhibit page with curator notes.

Visitors browsing the floor plan tap a gallery pin and immediately see what is inside. The docent desk phone number doubles as an accessibility feature — visitors who want audio description or mobility help can call directly from the marker without hunting for a contact page.

Curatorial staff also appreciated that updating an exhibit's hours (during a private event, for example) is a two-second edit — not a reprint.

How visitors see the new details

When a visitor taps a marker on the scan page, the popup now shows, in order: the marker name, its description, a "You are here" badge if it is the scanned marker, the optional photo, any floor transition ("Go to Floor 3"), and a clean meta table with hours, a tap-to-call phone number, and a website link. If none of the new fields are set on a marker, the popup looks exactly as it did before — nothing gets cluttered for markers that are just simple points.

The photo is lazy-loaded and responsive. On slow mobile connections (think basement parking garage), the popup still loads fast with placeholder content, and the photo appears when the network catches up. No layout shift, no broken popup.

Tips for the best scan experience

A few patterns that work well:

Keep photos focused. The storefront, the entrance, the main room — not a wide-angle exterior shot. Visitors are looking at a 3-inch phone screen. A recognizable detail beats a scenic view.

Write hours human-readably. "Mon–Fri 9am–6pm, Sat 10am–4pm, Sun closed" is fine. "M–F 9–18 / S 10–16 / Su —" is not. Visitors scan, they do not parse.

Use the phone field for direct lines. The reception number is fine if you have nothing better, but a department-specific or store-specific number is much more useful. This is one place where a pharmacy's direct line or a conference desk's extension beats the hospital main number.

Do not duplicate info across fields. If hours are in the description, remove them once you add them to the hours field. The scan page will render both, which reads as a mistake.

Rich marker details are available on Professional and Scale plans. They are included automatically — no new setup needed beyond the "Additional details" section on each marker. QRCodeMaps offers a free trial if you want to try them before committing.