Virtual tours have been evolving for many years, from initially a sales tool for real estate, to 2025 where the 3D capture of real world premises can interact with all areas of a business: visitor and staff orientation; training and education; health and safety; building maintenance; community engagement tool. For example see the huge impact that our recent project for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital has had on visitors’ research and reassurance:
- over 7500 visitors in its first 3 months
- a whopping 7 minutes average engagement time prior to visiting the hospital
When a business is interested in exploring the uses of virtual tours as part of their sales and marketing strategy, one of the common questions asked is: “How is a virtual tour created?”
To answer this, we have created this step-by-step guide to the creation of perfect virtual tours:
Step 1: Capture
The first stage of creating a Matterport virtual tour is capturing your space. This process is highly versatile, suitable for both indoor and outdoor environments and can accommodate multi-level, multi-unit sites such as campuses or resorts
Here’s how it works:
Understanding Your Needs:
We begin with a face to face consultation to understand your business goals. For instance:
- Manufacturers might want to highlight machinery, products, or production processes to demonstrate industry-leading standards.
- Hotels often aim to showcase facilities and offers to entice guests to book.
- Showrooms may use tours to let customers browse product ranges from home when in-person visits aren’t possible.
The applications are as diverse as the industries we serve and we will always look to explore new options and opportunities using the technology to serve your business aims.
Planning your capture:
We assess the areas you want to include, deciding what should or shouldn’t be part of the tour, highlighting any potential tricky areas and providing solutions to ensure everything you want is included. This can be done off plan, from site walk images and video, or via an on-site recce.
Requirements for a great Matterport capture:
Captures only require a single operator with a tripod-mounted camera. The operator will move around the premises following the pre-agreed plan. To ensure a perfect capture, we require the following:
- The space must be free of staff or customers during the capture.
- Tidiness is paramount! The setting must be exactly how you wish it to appear as the camera sees everything. Whilst we can provide some edits (see Preliminary Edits below) removing objects and unwanted items is very costly post-capture.
- Ensure any confidential information is hidden from view (computers turned off, paperwork cleared).
- Ideally capture on a clear, bright day where natural light is important
- Access to all areas including opening/closing doors and public/staff areas (as required).
We mostly capture at weekends to minimise disruption to the business and ensuring the space is empty.
Step 2 - Rendering
Once the capture is completed, the data is imported into our 3D software and transformed into an interactive, explorable 3D model. During this stage:
Render
The model is then uploaded to the Matterport platform where it is automatically rendered into a 3D explorable space. This also generates the 3D ‘dollhouse’ view which allows a user to navigate the building externally to select where they wish to explore.
Quality Checks
Together with the client, we examine the model thoroughly, checking the captured areas for any potential issues that may need editing, and agreeing a final list of agreed edits.
Preliminary Edits
These include:
- Blurring sensitive information, faces, security systems, staff notices, camera shadows, non-client premises (in exterior areas).
- Trimming rough edges and tidying up spaces like roof spaces or non-required exterior areas.
- Optimising the user experience by enabling/disabling capture points to create smooth pathways throughout the tour.
Step 3 - Skinning
The rendered model is then branded and enhanced using VisualEyes’s customisable software platform. This step ensures the virtual tour delivers an exceptional user experience tailored to your brand and objectives.
Key features we can add to virtual tours include:
- Clickable “hotspots” to provide additional information or context, including links
- Customised menu for intuitive navigation including searchable directories, collapsible FAQs and highlight reel of key areas.
- Integration of social media links, contact details and call to action buttons.
- Embedding visual media including videos, images, PDFs or audio that plays as visitors explore.
- Adding virtual assets such as 3D objects and signage, green screen video presentations, or playable videos on screens.
- Fully branded design following your brand guidelines.
- GA4 compatible with the option to embed multiple tags so you can extract detailed analytics from your virtual tour.
The client reviews the model and content with any amends and sign-off being received prior to a final go-live date.
Step 4 - Go Live
When the model is signed off, we make it available online with a custom URL. Virtual tours are best viewed fullscreen and treated as an extension to an existing website.
Additional benefits include:
- Shareable Links: You can link directly to any point within the tour, ideal for highlighting key areas in social media posts or on your website, or for sending in email to prospective clients to view a specific product or area.
- Social Media Content: We provide short videos extracted from your virtual tour, perfect for promoting it across various platforms and driving traffic to your website.
Furthermore, once live we don’t just leave things there. We continue til help you maximise this powerful new asset with a range of post-launch support:
- Comprehensive guide with tips on maximising your new virtual asset.
- Access to analytics dashboard to track visitor engagement, popular areas, time spent exploring and a heatmap showing key engagement points within the model.
- Ongoing maintenance and updates: send us new marketing materials, and we’ll integrate them seamlessly into your tour.
- Duplicate the model: once live we can easily duplicate a model, allowing multiple business case uses, for example a marketing tool for customers, an internal training tool for new staff and a version for building maintenance and security. All based on one single capture!
- Capture updates: If an area of your premises is changed or redecorated, we can visit the site to recapture any changed areas, replacing them into the original model with no impact on URL or user experience.
Interested in a virtual tour for your business?
By following this professional, step-by-step process, VisualEyes ensures that every virtual tour we deliver exceeds your expectations, delivering measurable results for your business.
To discover how virtual tours can elevate your digital marketing and business processes, please book a free consultation with us to talk through possible options.
