Maps help visitors get to the area; the last stretch can still be tricky. Add an arrow button to your website. Visitors tap it on their phone and get a page with one arrow pointing to your entrance and the distance.
A picture with a link behind it. The picture is the banner above. The link opens the arrow page for your place.
Nothing else is added to your site. No script, no cookie, no tracker.
The place is written into the link itself: its coordinates and its name. There is no database of places.
Nothing is loaded from tarrow.dev until a visitor taps. You host the picture yourself.
Make your button
Not sure what to enter?
Mark the door, not the building. Mark the intended entrance: on the map, or standing there with your phone and “Use my location”. The arrow gets visitors close; a short note helps them recognise the right door.
Four ways to take it
Picture and link. Download the picture, upload it to your site and set the link on it. Works in every website builder.
HTML. The picture and the link in one block, for those who can paste code. It shows the wide picture on a desktop page and the tall one on a phone by itself.
Link only. For a message, or behind a “Directions” button you already have.
QR code. For visitors on a laptop, which has no usable compass. Put it beside the banner with a line such as “On a laptop? Scan to open on your phone.”
When visitors use it
For the last few hundred metres. A maps app brings people to your street. Its marker sits on the building, not on the door. The arrow covers what is left:
an entrance in a rear courtyard or on the side street
a reception 300 m behind the gate of a campsite
one practice on a hospital campus
a restaurant in a pedestrian zone, with parking 200 m away
a market stall, a trailhead, the meeting point of a tour
Keep your maps link. Maps for the journey, the arrow for the last stretch.
An example
Courtyard Café is an invented café. It has a street address, but its door is in the rear courtyard, through a gateway.
Getting here
Courtyard Café
12 Example Street · entrance through the gateway
Open daily 8–18
On the café’s “Getting here” page, the banner sits under the address.
A guest gets off the tram, stands on the street and sees no café. She opens the café’s website on her phone and taps the banner.
Her browser asks whether the page may use her location and the phone’s compass. She allows both.
The arrow turns toward the gateway. Under it: 80 m.
She holds the phone flat and walks where the arrow points. The number counts down until she is at the door.
She did not install anything, and the café did not have to describe the way in words.
Why it is free
No cost and no conditions. No account, no contract, no limit on taps, and the link has no expiry.
What we get out of it: the arrow page carries one small link to the iPhone app. The app is in beta and will be a one-time purchase. Some of your visitors will like the arrow and want it. That is the whole business; nothing is asked of you.
If your entrance moves, make a new link and replace the old one.
Where to put it
On the website: next to the address, in “Getting here”, or beside the parking information.
In a message, often the better place: put the link alone into the booking confirmation or the reminder on the day. That message is read on the phone, close to the moment of arriving.
What the link does, step by step
It opens a page in the visitor’s own browser.The address looks like tarrow.dev/compass?lat=…&lon=…&n=Courtyard Café.
The browser asks for permissionto use location, and on an iPhone also motion and orientation. Without a yes there is no arrow.
The phone works out the direction itself,from its GPS position, its compass and the coordinates in the link. The visitor’s position stays on the phone.
The page is small:about 225 KB, so it also opens on a weak connection or on roaming.
Most laptops have no usable compass.There the page shows the same link as a QR code, to carry on with the phone.
What it does not do
It is not a route. The arrow points in a straight line. It does not know walls, fences or rivers. The visitor chooses the way.
It works best under open sky. Indoors, underground and between tall buildings GPS gets inaccurate, and the page says so.
It does not track your visitors. No tracking script, no cookies, no visitor profiles, and no dashboard that shows you who tapped. The host keeps only short-lived totals per page and country; the privacy page says exactly what.