Experimental solutions have become vital to stand out in almost all industries. Often, you have to leverage technology and implement new ways to attract and retain your customer base.
One of the methods that has gained traction in recent years is 360° virtual tours. Most people who are familiar with these virtual experiences might remember them as clunky and jarring experiences.
But they’ve come a long way.
360° virtual tours let users walk through an actual physical space—like a property or a tourist attraction. The virtual tours are comprised of linked images of the real-world space taken from multiple locations and angles, which are then stitched together into an interactive experience.
Today, companies across different industries are using them as serious sales and marketing tools.
The reasons are evident. If you’re a buyer or a stakeholder, these tours let you explore a real space without you having to be there in person. For the companies behind them, it's a way to show prospects exactly what they're offering, no friction required.
A report from Google is a testament to this. Compared to standard ads, 360° ads earned 41% more actions from customers. Similarly, in real estate, properties have seen their average days in market drop, from 30 to 21 days.
Let's look at some of the most common use cases to know more about its current status.
Imagine being able to show an entire property to a prospect living thousands of kilometres away. You can allow your prospect to explore every nook and cranny of the space from the comfort of their couch. All without demanding they visit personally.
If you’re in the real estate sector, this is precisely what 360° virtual tours enable you to do. Your prospects may come across a property of yours initially in the form of a few static photos. Then, a virtual walkthrough of the same expands their understanding of the property, and they decide it’s worth an actual visit.
A study shows that if you bundle properties with an immersive 360° virtual tour, you’ll often have higher closing rates compared to properties that don’t. Often, the virtual tour is all that is required for you to close a deal with a prospect.
The primary reason for such quick decisions is that virtual walkthroughs mitigate uncertainty. Real estate investments—especially personal property— are practical and emotional decisions behind which hours of deliberate thought, often from multiple people, are involved. The more uncertainty surrounding your property, the more time it takes for your buyer to decide. Eliminate that uncertainty, and decisions come faster.
Every year, vacationers around the world complain about the mismatch between the hotel they booked and the hotel they received. They complain online about the deceptive practices they fell for, where photos of the property they booked bore no resemblance to its actual state.
As a result, immersive 360° virtual tours have become part of the repertoire of major hospitality chains. Before prospects visit and stay at your actual location, they can experience the space virtually and decide if it matches their expectations. In such cases, photos serve as the entry point, while the 360° virtual walkthrough becomes the final selling point that seals the deal.
Hospitality chains that have implemented 360° virtual tours as part of their strategy have reported faster ROI on their investment. Properties with virtual tours have reported 87% more bookings.
Virtual commerce has become an integral part of e-commerce. As stores have fought to differentiate themselves from competitors, many have started offering virtual experiences, including 360° virtual tours.
This means your customers no longer need to visit your store or showroom in person to see a product they're interested in. Thanks to advances in web and related technologies, they can do it right from their mobile or desktop browser. In fact, websites that offer such experiences report that users spend 5 to 10 times more on their sites.
Every year, thousands of students graduate from high school and prepare to attend a university. Often, for the first time, stepping out of their hometown to live somewhere else for an extended period without their family.
You might think, ‘how does a virtual tour work in this situation?’
Universities are now offering 360° virtual tours of their entire premises. Prospective students can view these tours, observe the facilities, and compare them against other universities on their shortlist.
According to a report, 92% of universities in the US now provide virtual walkthroughs as part of their admissions strategy. Those that do see a 16% uptick in the number of applications they receive.
Exploratory experiences in this context refer to real-world sites—heritage sites or tourist attractions—that visitors can explore through their devices.
Rather than replacing the experience of visiting these attractions, 360° virtual tours act as a partial glimpse into the actual location, sparking curiosity in prospective visitors and potentially inspiring them to plan a trip to that very spot.
For historical attractions, this also becomes an interesting educational tool for schools and universities. Often, due to budget constraints or travel limitations, students cannot directly visit the heritage sites they are learning about. A 360° virtual walkthrough, on the other hand, allows them to be virtually present in that space and interact with it.
Creating a 360° virtual tour is not as straightforward as shooting a video or snapping a few photos and combining them. It requires you to do careful planning across several phases.
Capture: The first phase, where a 360° camera using multiple wide-angle lenses is set up to cover all critical areas from different directions, so that the entire space can be stitched together into a cohesive virtual experience.
Stitching: The individual lens feeds are then processed by specialists using dedicated software, which blends the overlapping edges into a seamless spherical image. For the result to be a smooth, coherent experience rather than a disorienting one, this step requires specialists with experience in this area.
Hotspot & Navigation Mapping: This phase involves building the navigation of the entire experience, creating clickable hotspots that allow users to move from one vantage point to another as they walk through the space.
Delivery: The final tour is rendered in a web viewer or VR headset, where viewers can look in any direction from each captured point. Ideally, the delivery format allows users on different devices to experience the tour without needing to own a VR headset or even know what XR is.
Before creating a 360° virtual tour of your premises or offerings, there are two crucial aspects to consider.
Many vendors who provide 360° virtual tour creation as part of their offering tend to lock you into their ecosystem. This means you cannot take the same files to a different provider and expect them to work. You are stuck with them.
This lock-in becomes a significant issue if the vendor decides to shut down their operations or discontinue 360° video creation as part of their offering. It also becomes a problem if a dispute arises between you and the vendor over the quality or delivery of the final output.
So, it’s always better to check with the vendor regarding their lock-in policies.
If you look at how virtual tours work, they are most often hosted in the cloud so that people can access them from remote locations. Before creating a virtual tour, you need to weigh the potential impact against the ongoing cost of cloud hosting and the potential gains from the virtual tour's impact.
In certain sectors — particularly real estate and hospitality—360° virtual tours can be an important aspect of sales and marketing, allowing prospective customers to see what they're in for before making a critical decision. You don’t have to know exactly how a virtual tour works.
Beyond the direct sales benefit, brands that implement such experiences carry the added advantage of being perceived as technology-first companies. In a world that’s rapidly moving towards new technologies, like AI and VR training, this perception is becoming more and more important.
Any experimental solution that helps your prospects make the right decisions more quickly would be heartily welcomed.
