Virtual Tours for All Business Sectors - Part 3

What is the Best Way to Produce a Great 360 Virtual Tour ror Businesses?

Have it produced in-house or call upon one of the many professional photographers available on Klapty's website?

This third article in our series on virtual tours in different business sectors focuses on production. We will examine the best practices and some of the constraints that need to be considered in order to produce a high-quality tour.
 

Showcasing
 

A first important rule: There is no point producing the greatest virtual tour ever, if it is not properly showcased.

Whatever you want to promote, a property, a restaurant or a hotel room, creating an effective virtual tour implies you make the place look attractive beforehand. This involves highlighting the most interesting aspects, ensuring elements in each scene are set harmoniously and creating small details the visitor will find attractive. You may want to check some of the rules of home-staging:

http://www.makingyoufindable.com/top-15-home-staging-rules-according-to-studies/
 

Also beware of elements that may drive your shooting off-track when filming your tour. An animal walking into your camera's field of view will mean you need to start all over again...

Beyond the interior aspects of your virtual tour's subject, it is often valuable to help the visitor grasp its surroundings, by shooting through the building's windows or from a balcony. Another approach involves starting your virtual tour outside the building, thereby allowing the visitor to obtain a 360-degree view, then entering the premises.

Any photographer or film director will confirm that light is the key to success in their activity. Although most recent 360 degree cameras make it easy for most of us to shoot our own 360-degree tours affordably, ensuring a proper uniform lighting throughout the tour is still complex for most people. Calling upon a professional 360 photographer, many of which you can find on Klapty, is still the best way to ensure your projects' success.
 

A proper distribution
 

Once you have produced a professional 360 virtual tour, it is important to have it distributed to as many relevant people as possible.

The first factor here is that of loading speed. If visitors need to spend a long time waiting for your virtual tour to load, or every time they interact with it, they will soon run away from your website. Optimising the servers on which your tour is hosted is therefore critical. The Klapty platform was designed from scratch with this in mind and allows for high-speed virtual tour distribution.

Being able to rapidly load your tour is great, but people must first be able to find it. Ensuring the website on which your tour is hosted is properly referenced with the main website search engines is a key criterion for success. This is even critical in sectors such as tourism, as you may have visitors from anywhere worldwide. The best chance for them to find your virtual tour is to have it located on a website with good SEO. Klapty, who wants to become the Instagram of 360 virtual tours, has made search engine optimisation a business priority. Any virtual tour published on Klapty will be easy to find, even for a person on the other side of the planet.
 

Two other aspects remain important to ensure your tour's success:

> Mobile compatibility: A growing number of visitors will explore virtual tours using smartphones, which implies your virtual tours must be compatible with most of today's mobile devices

> Complementarity: Several studies show that combining a virtual tour with high-quality photos is the best way to promote a place. Don't hesitate therefore to have a few good quality pictures taken during your virtual tour production