Thanks to Keisha for suggesting that we add a parking option for “carport”.

Carport option added to Virtual Tour Details

Carport option showing on Virtual Tour Web Page

Carport option showing on Virtual Tour Widget

Let us know if you have ideas for improving TourVista!

TourVista has customers all around the world and our newest update is to change the currency for your tour’s pricing so it is appropriate for your country.

Follow these steps to update your virtual tour’s pricing currency:

1. Sign in to your TourVista account
2. Select the virtual tour from My Virtual Tours
3. Notice the new option for changing currencies next to pricing. Select the appropriate currency.
4. If your currency is not listed, contact us to request that we add your currency.
5. Save your virtual tour

The currency will be updated on your dedicated page and also your virtual tour widgets.

Thanks for the suggestion Gabe! We listen to (good) suggestions from our users.  If you have an idea on how TourVista can be improved, let us know!

Tutorial on how to set the availability date for your property virtual tours on TourVista.com and also on your Community Website if you have one. Choose from 3 options:

1. Now - if your property is currently available.
2. Please Call – if unsure of availability. On your Community Website, this message will show: “Limited availability. Please call to be added to our waitlist.“
3. Not Until Date… – if this property is not available until a certain date in the future, select  and enter that date.

Many users of TourVista’s virtual tours are apartment communities. Since our inception, we have received a lot of requests from these communities for professional services, ranging from professional photography and videography, to graphic design and custom websites.

We listened.  Today we are happy to announce the addition of TourVista Apartment Community Websites to our suite of products.  In a nutshell, we:

1. Setup and host a custom website for your apartment community, including your very own branded domain name, like www.yourname.com.
2. Brand the website with your logo, colors, and pictures of your community.
3. Integrate all of your TourVista virtual tours into your website’s Virtual Tours page.
4. Setup a photo gallery, event calendar, lead generation and resident support forms, and blog, all of which are search engine optimized (SEO) to help your website rank higher in Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
5. Hand over the keys and teach you how to update the content in-house, saving you time and money versus hiring a professional web developer every time you want to make an update.

Check out live examples of recently launched apartment community websites.

We listen to requests from our users.  In fact, we count on you to help drive the evolution of TourVista.  So don’t be shy if you have an idea that would improve your TourVista experience.  Let us know!

Here’s to a positive and productive season for marketing your properties!

One of the best features of TourVista is the ability to setup interactive floor plans for your properties.  Interactive floor plans consist of arrows on a floor plan graphic for each of your property photos.  Think of it as a “You are here” arrow, showing the viewers of your virtual tour exactly where each photo was taken on a map of the property floor plan.

The benefits of interactive floor plans are numerous.  Your property will stand out compared to the others that only use photos.  In addition, viewers of your virtual tour will gain much more knowledge about your property and get a much better “feel” for the layout.  More knowledge and less guesswork will increase the quality of leads that your virtual tour generates for you.

Example of a floor plan graphic by TourVista, created from a hand-drawn sketch.

TourVista makes it easy to connect your photos to a floor plan, but how do you create a floor plan graphic in the first place? We’ve outlined a step-by-step tutorial for creating floor plan graphics from your sketches using Photoshop.  If you don’t have Photoshop (or you own Photoshop but don’t have the time / skills to do it yourself), TourVista is now offering a service for converting your hand drawn floor plan sketches into graphics.

To get started, we just need a scan or digital photo of your floor plan sketches.  A digital photo of the home blueprint works, too.  The final floor plan graphic is similar in quality and design to the example shown on this post.  If you include room dimensions, we’ll be sure to add those to your graphics (rounded to the nearest foot).

We’ll send you the finished floor plan graphic as a .gif file and also the master Photoshop .psd file.  Allow 48 hours from the time we receive your floor plan sketches/photos.  You are then able to connect your photos to the floor plan like this tutorial demonstrates.

The price for converting your floor plan sketch or digital photo into a graphic is $15 per graphic.  For example, a two story home would cost $30 and floor plan graphics would be created for both floors.  We accept advance payment via PayPal or credit card.

Example of a floor plan graphic created from a hand-drawn sketch.

Give our floor plan creation service a shot for one of your virtual tours and we’re sure that you will see the benefits of a better virtual tour and receive higher quality leads.

It’s easy to link your virtual tours on TourVista to your Facebook and Twitter pages.  Just copy/paste the URL (web page address) for your Facebook and Twitter pages into the form on My Account when logged into TourVista.

Connect your virtual tours to your accounts on Facebook and Twitter

By doing so, your viewers will be able to connect with you in new ways.  Thanks to our friends at www.zaran.com for suggesting this latest improvement to TourVista.

An annoying website bug was squashed today: the ability to drag and drop property photos in Internet Explorer web browser.

This is a great (and fun!) feature of TourVista.  No need to mess with annoying up/down arrows to put your photos in the perfect order.  Just click on a photo with your mouse, drag it to the proper order relative to the other photos, and drop it into place!  Piece of cake.  The other photos will automatically rearrange themselves, too.

Watch a video demo of sorting photos via drag and drop (jump to 1:15 in the video).

TourVista provides a free copy and paste Craigslist template to quickly post your property onto the world’s most popular real estate rental site. Your property will stand out with our 6 professionally designed templates, and you will save a ton of time when creating your post on Craigslist.

Here is a video tutorial for posting your TourVista virtual tour onto Craigslist:

TourVista’s interactive floor plans are a great addition to your virtual tour.  If you already have floor plan graphics, you are ready to connect them to your photos and create interactive floor plans.

But how do you create the floor plan graphic in the first place?

You may be able to get floor plan graphics from an assessor or your home blueprints (if you can find them). Or you could just do it the old fashioned way: with a pencil and some graph paper!

Drawing a sketch of your floor plans and converting that sketch into a floor plan graphic is a fast and easy way to create your floor plans.  Here’s a tutorial on how to convert your sketches into floor plan graphics using Photoshop.

The video above follows these steps for creating a floor plan graphic from your hand-drawn sketches using Photoshop:

1. take a picture of the sketch from straight above
2. open picture in Photoshop and crop it; leave a small padding for the borders and dimensions should be at least 500px
   1. if long and narrow, consider rotating it 90 degrees
3. add guides for each wall
4. draw exterior & interior walls on their own layers
   1. hold “shift” key and click away
5. add room name labels
6. export for web as .gif
7. save .psd for future reference
8. upload floor plan graphic to your virtual tour on www.TourVista.com

Walls

• color: #777777 (gray)
• pencil width: 5px for exterior; 3px for interior

Room Labels

• Myriad Pro – Bold Condensed
• color: #000000 (black)
• Size: 18-36pt

Note: when uploaded to TourVista the floor plan will be shrunk to around 350px wide.

Leverage the power of Facebook, Twitter and over 50 other social networks to help spread the word about your virtual tours. It is super easy to do and a great way to share & promote your real estate listings using the web’s hottest new technologies.

Instructions: Post your virtual tour on Facebook

1. open your dedicated property website in any web browser (e.g. www.tourvista.com/784)
2. click on the Share tab
3. mouseover the “Social networks and bookmarking sites” button and click on Facebook

Facebook will open in a new window and pre-populate a Profile post for your Wall that includes:

• a link to your virtual tour website
• the property address, type and description
• a thumbnail image – select a different image using the little arrow buttons

Add a personal note at the top if you’d like and click the Share button to update your Wall and your friend’s News Feeds.

Note: you have the option of “Send a Message” that will email your TourVista link to select friends directly from Facebook. We recommend using the Wall method described above because it allows visibility to all of your friends (present and future) and will generate more traffic for you.  In this sense, the Wall post is less invasive on your friends and more permanent for your online marketing.

ps – speaking of Facebook, if you haven’t claimed your personal Facebook URL yet (e.g. www.facebook.com/mattcass) do it now – www.facebook.com/username. You can get one for your company page on Facebook but only if you have 1,000 fans. Of course, we’d love to have you become a fan of TourVista’s Facebook page!

update 12/21/09: link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts directly from your virtual tours!