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Why Invest in 360 Virtual Tour for Real Estate and How to Get Started?
As the competition increases in the market, every brand needs to move out of its comfort zone and come up with strategies to compel customers to choose its offering. Particularly in the real estate industry, which is growing tremendously, it has become very challenging to engage prospective clients long enough to convert them.
In that endeavor, 360-degree virtual tours have helped real estate companies in many ways. This is a very engaging medium to showcase a property, and it also helps weed out window shoppers from genuinely interested consumers. Read on to know why virtual tours are a good idea for real estate businesses.
Importance of 360 Virtual Tour for Real Estate
1. Increase Sales
Providing 360 virtual tours to the clients gives them a clear picture of the property. A complete and attractive 360 virtual tour compels the client to buy the property if it suits all their requirements. Such a strategy leads to a higher click-through rate than images or videos. This eventually leads to higher traffic and increased sales.
2. Higher Engagement
Clients prefer 360 virtual tours of property over pictures. Through virtual tours, clients can better understand the property, which helps them decide whether to move on with their choice. Research by realtor.com showed that listings that used virtual tours received 87% more views than the property listing that was without the tour. The reason behind such positive stats is that with 360 virtual tours, customers are able to see the details of the property, and in addition, this strategy is able to hold the attention of the customer for a longer period.
3. Overrule the Competition
In this world full of competition, companies need to develop different strategies to help them stand out from the crowd and build more trust with their clients. 360 virtual tours of the property are one such strategy that can be used by today’s real estate brands. Real estate businesses can shoot a 360 virtual tour of the property and publish it on the website rather than just posting videos or images. This will help clients make better and quick decisions.
4. Show Multiple Properties
As time is money, clients want to see a maximum number of properties in a limited time so that they can save time and choose the best ones that suit their demands. To do so, the brand can use 360 virtual tours of the property and offer the clients a complete detailed tour of the property. This way, brands can showcase different properties to different clients, saving their costs and time.
5. Great Impact on Customers
As the visual presentation leaves a long-term impression on the client, 360 virtual tours work in the same way where the client is most likely to remember how the property looks for a long time. They are able to recall the details easily as they have virtually visited each corner of it. This helps them make a faster decision as compared to when no virtual tour is present.
Tips to Shoot a 360 Virtual Tour on a budget
Here are some factors that you have to keep in mind while shooting the virtual tour:-
1. Select the Camera
First, and the foremost choice you have to make is whether you want to shoot it on a DSLR camera or a smartphone. If you don’t have DSLR, then you don’t need to buy DSLR or you don’t even need to hire a professional photographer to do so because today’s software has made it possible for everyone to shoot such video on their smartphone at their ease. So you can prepare your smartphone to shoot 360 virtual tours of the property.
2. Select the Equipment
Once you have set up your device, with the help of which you will shoot, you have to also set up and organize other requirements. Other equipment needed for making virtual tours is battery backups and an extra SD card, as 360-degree video needs a lot of storage space and huge battery usage. Apart from these, a monopod or tripod to make the camera stable.
3. Choosing the Perfect Shooting Time
Light is important to get the perfect shot, so the perfect shooting time eases half of the tension while shooting a 360-degree virtual tour. A Misconception is shooting the video in the morning when the sun is bright is the right time, but your tour might seem blown out in such a scenario. So the right time may be at sundown when the light is of better quality and warm.
4. Keep the device at the right height
The placement of the camera plays a vital factor in the experience of the viewers. It is very important to keep the camera in the line of sight, otherwise, if kept low or high, viewers will experience things that are either dwarf or giant. So placing it in the right place will enhance the experience.
5. Control the Shutter Speed
Shutter speed should change with the intensity of light getting in the camera, as it will affect whether the video will be darker or lighter. Along with this, the video maker should be well-versed with all the settings and their utilities in the proper place. When using multiple cameras, it is suggested to be in manual mode and turn off the white balance, ISO, and color temperature. Keeping all videos in the same timeline reduces a lot of after-work.
6. Beautify the Place
The camera can see even a very small thing, so it is advised that you should just clean the place and organize it well before you start shooting. This is an important factor that can affect the overall quality of the video, so try to keep the shooting place tidy and organized as much as possible. Furthermore, a well clean space will increase the customer experience. However, if you don’t have the time to clean up, you can go with virtual staging for real estate.
7. Maintain proper lighting
Lighting says all about the pictures and videos. Maintaining proper lighting is the thing to keep in mind while preparing to shoot. Even a small change can change the whole output of the shoot, so it is advised that first, you should try the lighting and then start your final shoot.
8. No Closeups
Setting the camera in the middle gives a good perspective of the objects. Any closeup shots can hamper the quality as you might ignore other important things inside the property so try to shoot a wide-angle 360 virtual tour.
9. Prevent Mirror and Reflection
Reflections can disturb the whole flow of the virtual tours if not taken into consideration. Your reflection, camera reflection, etc., can be captured by a mirror easily. So while taking shots, even the glass pane of windows needs to be taken care of.
10. Advanced Editing Skills
This is one of the most crucial steps in the journey of shooting 360-degree virtual tour videos. Editing is the most time taking, and it requires skilled work. For getting a high-quality video, the editing skills should match the professional level of expertise. It not only takes time to master such skills but also needs patience. Editing, in the case of a 360-degree video tour, includes stitching smaller videos and improvising the amount of light, shadows, colors, and shades in each frame of the video.
The virtual tour can be a great success if each of the tips is taken seriously and is done with utmost accuracy. Now with modern and advanced technologies, businesses need not spend hours on hiring photographers or expensive equipment.
Conclusion
If you want to drive more traffic to your business, you have to keep evaluating and improving your strategies. With time, clients’ decision-making behavior is also being affected by technology and by how convenient it is for them to make decisions. 360 virtual tours make it easier for the client to judge whether the property fulfills their requirement or not, and thus such a strategy yields higher click-through rates and sales.
So, if you want to sustain yourself in this challenging industry, you need to adopt this strategy, and to do so, you can go for virtual staging solutions for real estate services offered by experts.
