Slow and steady...

Every day you make a tiny bit if progress. You make one thing just a smidgen better. A tiny improvement that will barely benefit anyone. One inch.

There are thousands of these tiny things.

It takes a mindset of constant criticism to find them. And as you fix more and more of these little details, as you polish and shape and shine and craft the little corners of your product, something magical happens.

The inches add up to feet, the feet add up to yards, and the yards add up to miles. And you have a truly great product. The kind of product that feels great, that works intuitively, that blows people away. The kind of product where that one-in-a-million user doing that one-in-a-million unusual thing finds that not only does it work, but it’s beautiful: even the janitor’s closets of your software have marble floors and solid-core oak doors and polished mahogany wainscoting.

And that’s when you know it’s great software.

Loosely copied from “More Joel on Software”

Is your home or apartment more cozy than the pictures convey? You have to think… Why are they buying the house? What are they looking for in the house? And do your pictures show the best possible image of your home to buyers? If you’re having trouble with your digital photos, MSN Real Estate has comprised a list of 6 tips for drawing in buyers through your photos online. This is especially applicable to anyone using Craigslist or the TourVista Craigslist templates.

1. Lighten up your subject – don’t take photos at night or try to use dramatic lighting. The clearer and the more professional looking, the better the photo.
2. More is better – take as many pictures as possible. The more you show, the more your buyer will feel better about wanting to see the house in person.
3. Get a clear shot - clean up your house or have it “staged” for the photos – clean area, no clutter, no trash outside, etc.
4. Go Pro – If you can’t seem to take great pictures on your own, consider using TourVista’s Professional Services.
5. Give it your best shot - borrow a friend’s camera or try to rent one from a local shop.
6. Edit – using Flickr or Photoshop to edit your photos can make a world of difference.

When it comes to homes for rent, vacant apartments, and sublets, CraigsList.com is the #1 classifieds website for the 21st century market. It’s free, easy to use, and everyone has heard of it. In a recent conversation with a friend in NYC, she explained to me how she found her apartment by saying, “everyone here uses Craiglist.” But how do your buyers/renters sort between listings? How do you stand out among a sea of others? The answer is simple. The seven simple rules to posting on Craigslist. Use these simple instructions while creating your TourVista Craigslist add for your real estate listing. The Tourvista Craigslist templates are easy to fill out, simple to view, and more professional looking than posting directly form Craigslist alone.

When you pay attention to the details of your real estate listing, your buyers will too. But when you don’t pay attention to the details, they may end up standing out in a bad way. A few quick care chores to your home such as: touch-up paining, cutting grass, doing the dishes, or hiding the old lawn furniture, can have a lasting impact on your buyers and the way they view your home – or themselves in the home. Don’t cheat yourself when it comes to the value and beauty of your real estate listing. Putting your best home forward will not only bring buyers in the door, but it will ultimately lead to a buyer who will stay (in the door). And this article:  Pay attention to buyer turnoffs in your home. will help you anticipate what your buyers are looking for from the moment they walk in.

TourVista’s suggestion: When it comes to your virtual tours and Craiglist adds, do your touch-ups before your photo shoot! Don’t take pictures of a leaking gutter, hole in the wall, or missing woodwork from a door. Take the time and a little extra money to always make sure you’re putting your best home forward. A little love = a buyer loving your listing.

If you have a video of your listing, be sure to include it on your TourVista virtual tour.  Here’s how:

1. Upgrade your virtual tour to Premium
2. Upload your video to your YouTube account
3. Copy the video ID from YouTube
4. Paste the video ID into the Video section of your virtual tour

Now a Video tab will show on your virtual tour page & widgets that includes your video from YouTube.  

Plus, thanks to the suggestion from Phyllis R., the “Related Videos” from YouTube are no longer showing when your video finished playing on your virtual tour.  Not only is this a better experience for your viewers (no need to show them content that is not specifically about your property) but if your property is in an MLS you don’t have to worry about getting any fines.  Some MLS’s are very strict about what you can and cannot show about a property online.

Google Maps is great and most of the time it works as expected.  But every once in a while, for whatever reason, it won’t map your property correctly.  This is annoying and ruins all of the effort you’ve put into creating your virtual tour on TourVista.  

Previously, you had to contact us and we would manually update your mapping.  As you know, TourVista is all about do-it-yourself solutions, so we’ve made some improvements to our tour management interface and now you can easily modify the mapping of your property as it shows on Google Maps!

Here’s a video tutorial from our founder Matt Cassarino explaining the deets:

Hey All,

We’ve given our real estate marketing blog some much needed love by adding a few cool social media improvements:

1. Notice on the left the super cool social media share box.  This makes it a breeze to share a great blog post with your social network.  And check out what happens when you scroll the page down… how cool is that!  Thanks Sharebar for the great WordPress plugin.
2. Next we added a list of Related Posts at the bottom of each post.  A great way to showcase useful and related content on our blog.
3. In the Comments section there is checkbox for staying in the loop as comments are posted to a conversation — cool.
4. And last but not least, at the bottom of each blog post we’ve included links to the next and previous posts for easy browsing.

Now, admittedly, none of the above is that impressive (well, the sharebar one is pretty slick), but the point is (a) that we are continually working to improve our website and blog, and (b) that there are some social media improvements in the works for your virtual tours at TourVista.com.

We’ve heard from some of our users that people may not know to mouseover the interactive floor plans in order to view the arrows and each respective photograph.  Leaving out this instructive text was a deliberate design decision as we wanted to keep the tour player free of unnecessary content.  However, at the same time, if a user doesn’t realize that their is an interactive floor plan and never experiences that aspect of the virtual tour, that’s an even greater loss.

So we’ve updated the TourVista source code to give the best of both worlds.  Now you can choose whether or not to show a message informing the users that they should mouseover the interactive floor plan in order to use it.  And you can even customize the message text for each of your virtual tours with interactive floor plans!

Thanks to Eric from Chicago for this suggestion.  Check out his virtual tour in Chicago’s Garfield Ridge.  As always, let us know what you think and if you have any ideas for improving TourVista, we’re listening.

In case you ever need to transfer a virtual tour between accounts, don’t waste your time in recreating it!  Just follow the steps outlined in this tutorial and quickly move a virtual tour from one TourVista account to another.

Note: if you are transferring a Premium virtual tour to a Free account or an account that has already used up all of its Premium virtual tours, the transferred Premium tour will be automatically downgraded to Free.  However, don’t worry about losing any of the data from the tour.  The receiving account can simply upgrade to a larger Premium plan and then upgrade the transferred virtual tour back to its Premium status.

Google Analytics to Track Virtual Tour Statistics

We are happy to announce support for Google Analytics on TourVista’s  real estate marketing platform.  In addition to the built-in statistics that TourVista provides all user accounts, it is now possible to track your virtual tour statistics using Google Analytics.  Here’s how:

1. Copy your Google Analytics tracking code.  It will be in this format: UA-12345678-1
2. Login to your TourVista account and select the tour you want to track stats.
3. Select “Analytics (Stats)” from the “This Tour” drop down menu.
4. Paste your Google Analytics tracking code from step 1 into the field.
5. To quickly apply the same Google Analytics tracking code to ALL virtual tours in your account, just mark the checkbox.
6. Save.

Any tour views you get from this point on will be tracked in your Google Analytics account (although it will take a few hours for the stats to start showing in Analytics).