Why You Need a 3D Virtual Tour for Your Business

The ability to browse and purchase items and services online from the comfort of a living room has completely revolutionized the sales industries. Potential customers can locate and learn about your business while in their pajamas at all hours of the day and night. This accessibility is a great option for most buyers, but too many businesses do not take full advantage of the technology to really sell their products, services and companies.

Your Website is Your Shop Window Online

Adding a 3D virtual tour to your business’s marketing plan can drastically improve your online presence. Your potential customers will benefit from the visualization of your business, enhancing their understanding of your physical environment and of your products or services. Allowing customers to see your business with their own eyes is a powerful selling tool that too many businesses ignore in their online advertising. This is why you need a 3D virtual tour of your business.

Think about all the people who are driven to make a purchase based on what they unintentionally see through a shop window while walking through a mall. When your business is online, the chances of someone “passing by your shop window,” seeing something he or she likes and making a purchase are very slim. You need potential clients to stay on your page longer than the typical 30 seconds of attention before clicking away to something else. You need something eye-catching and different that will draw customers to your site, and you need something memorable that makes you stand out from your competitors.

A 3D virtual tour gives customers the opportunity to see through the “window” and into your business without traveling to your location, without worrying about store hours and without much time or effort on their part. These are all selling points to your potential customers.

Who should Use a 3D virtual tour:

The Difference Between Still Photos and a Virtual Tour

You could, of course, give potential customers a series of photos of your business, thereby providing a similar glimpse into the inner workings of your company. However, two-dimensional photography is simply not as dynamic or memorable as a virtual tour. You will convert more views into sales with a 3D virtual tour, and the reasons are simple:
1. As the saying goes, a photograph is worth a thousand words. However, a virtual tour is worth a thousand photographs. Just think of all the images of your business you would need to create a complete, 360-degree view. No customer is going to click through all of those photos; however, many will choose to activate and view a 3D virtual tour because it takes very little effort, continues moving and commands attention.
2. Using virtual reality as a marketing tool seems cutting-edge and exciting, and you will impress potential clients with such an advancement in your business. Although some companies are slowly catching on to the technology behind 3D virtual tours, this feature is far from commonplace. Adding this tour to your website will be a big boost to your business and to your sales.
3. Virtual tours are immersive experiences that drop your potential customers into your business from the comfort of their homes. Your customers could get a feel for your business from standard photographs, but the 2D aspect of images is far less inviting than seeing the space in a 360-degree view. Being able to spin around and to experience all the corners of your physical business environment builds potential clients’ confidence in your company.
4. Most 360-degree virtual tours are interactive, allowing visitors to navigate the space as they choose. This gives your potential customers some control over their visit, a feature that most users enjoy more than being forced to turn and look at pre-specified moments, especially if an item catches their attention. If you let your customers have some control over their choices in the tour, they are more likely to trust you with their business.
5. You can feature important areas of your business in your virtual tour to lead your customers to understand your company. Before you create your 3D tour, make sure that you think about the best items to showcase that will catch customers’ attention and interest. For example, if you have a particular in-store display that leads to a lot of sales, make sure that you linger on that footage a little more during your virtual tour and give customers a chance to see it from all angles.

Methods to Increase Sales and Revenue

No matter your type of business, adding a 3D virtual tour can increase your sales and overall revenue. There are a few reasons that you will very quickly see this spike in sales:
1. There will be an increase in visits to your website due to interest. Because you will capture the attention of your customers with your virtual tour, they are more likely to return to your site and to recommend it to their friends. This is called your site’s “stickiness” because visitors stick around more.
2. You will have a round-the-clock online presentation of your business and your products that can be used over and over again for the same customer as well as for different customers. You can also share your virtual tour with other media outlets, such as sending it to a local newspaper site to place on its advertisement page. All of this is just more exposure for your business and acts as a silent salesperson for you.
3. Virtual tours are proven to generate faster rates of sales. As you impress your potential customers with your tour, you offer your email, telephone number or online order form directly so that your customers can move straight from the tour to making a purchase.
4. You can provide more information through demonstrations and interactions within the virtual tour than through a static website with images, especially if you are selling a product. A 360-degree virtual tour can walk all the way around the product, showing it from all angles in real time and real size. This allows your potential customers to get a better feel for the product than if you had just posted motionless photographs of it.
5. The virtual tour is a time- and cost-effective way to show the entire business environment in 360 degrees. All the time and money that you spend on promoting your product or service through advertisements, travel, promotions and meetings can be rolled up into a thorough and effective 3D virtual tour.
6. People feel safer ordering from a business that they have visited and with which they feel a familiarity. A virtual tour is much more intimate than still photographs of selected areas of the business. By creating this familiarity with your business, you are more likely to convert visits to sales and to earn repeat customers.

Ways You Can Use Your Virtual Tour

A 3D virtual tour for your business is much more than a one-trick pony. In addition to placing it on your company’s main page, there are a variety of other ways that you can use your virtual tour to attract more customers and to increase your sales, including:
• In emails to interested groups, organizations or potential customers
• At trade show demonstrations in lieu of or in combination with a live presentation
• At meetings and conferences for interested parties
• To sell real estate to interested buyers
• To sell travel locations or remote rentals or services
• To demonstrate previous developments or projects to interest potential investors
• In promotional materials when applying for grants or funds
• For sending via wireless devices to customers or other interested groups

Being able to use your virtual tour in all of these different situations, as well as in many others, will make your business more accessible and more efficient. The opportunities and ways to use your virtual tour are nearly unlimited. If you can think of another method that you can get more out of your tour, there is no reason not to give it a try.

Some Conclusions About Virtual Tours

Overall, a virtual tour is a more relaxed method of promoting your business. Your goal is simply to get people to view your online presentation without immediately trying to sell them. Once you have potential customers interested in your advertisement, then you can offer targeted actions that will lead to a sale.

In addition, once you have a completed virtual tour, you will be able to update your tour quickly and easily when you change advertisements, product model or display style through most tour-creation services. This is another cost-effective and logical way to keep your virtual tour fresh and current to your business.

When you invest in a 3D virtual tour for your business, you are creating a more concise and compelling experience for your clients and potential clients. When people go to a business website, they expect you to sell yourself and your product or service to the utmost of your ability. A virtual tour will set you above the rest of your competition, interesting more customers and increasing your revenue.