Category: All

#4 – Property Availability Date Field

UPDATE: 06/29/2010 – we’ve improved the availability options.  See this new blog post and short tutorial video.

A subtle but important addition is now showing on the Property Details page for your virtual tours, the availability date field:

available-date-field

Use this field to indicate if your property is not available until a certain calendar date.  This is especially useful for rental properties that are currently occupied and becoming available in the near future.

If you have included an availability date for a virtual tour, your dedicated property website on TourVista and your widgets will automatically update to show the available date:

availability-on-virtual-tours

If you are using TourVista’s Community Website Templates, the availability for each of your properties is shown. Either the date will show, or “Available NOW” if you have left the availability date field empty. Here’s an example from a website currently powered by TourVista, www.UWStudentHouses.com:

uwsh-availability

Create interactive floor plans from your property photos

Interactive floor plans add context to your content, showing your viewers where they are each step of the way as they tour your property online.

One of the main reasons that we created TourVista was to provide more information about properties online. Interactive floor plans are a wonderful way to accomplish this because they allow your viewers to orient themselves as they view each photo. By providing a “You are here” icon for each property photo, you have created a more engaging and memorable experience for your potential customers. Your property will definitely stand out.

Here’s a demo on creating interactive floor plans using TourVista:

Now showing all virtual tours in your account

Another frequently requested improvement to TourVista is to include on each virtual tour links to the other virtual tours in your account.  You’ve asked, we have delivered!

If you have setup multiple virtual tours in your TourVista account, they will now show on the left column of your dedicated property website, like so:

link to all virtual tours in your account

This addition is a great way to cross-market your other properties and take advantage of the traffic to each of your virtual tours.

TourVista is pleased to announce this newest update.  Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming!

#3: Craigslist copy/paste templates improved

Update: as of November 2013 Craigslist is no longer allowing fancy templates or externally-hosted images (you can still show images on your posts but they must be uploaded directly to Craigslist). More info and a great solution provided free from TourVista here.

* * *

Our free Craigslist templates have been improved to save you even more time. In addition to the main description HTML code that you can copy and paste into your Craigslist post, your property title, price and address are also shown. Just click to highlight them, copy and paste into Craigslist.

craiglist-copy-paste-template

There is also a link to your virtual tour photos on TourVista. While our Craigslist templates include your first 7 photos, it’s also a good idea to upload at least one other photo using the “Add Images” form that Craigslist provides. This photo will show at the bottom of your post. We recommend using a photo that is not already included in the template code TourVista provides.

We are working on some new Craigslist templates and look forward to offering these in the near future!

(Update: 08-16-09) – Video tutorial for posting your virtual tour onto Craigslist in only 3 minutes.

Virtual tour statistics now showing in your TourVista account!

Update March 2011: integrate Google Analytics with your virtual tours!

One of the most requested features from our users has been the ability to see a detail of each virtual tour’s traffic.  While your tours have been tracking this information from the day you first created them, the only statistic available to users was the total number of views.  Until now…

It is now possible to view information about every time your virtual tour has been viewed. The virtual tour viewing statistics are updated real-time, meaning you can know exactly when your tour is being viewed and which sites are sending that traffic.  Use this data to make your marketing efforts more effective:

  • date & time of the view
  • virtual tour type – your dedicated property website on TourVista, or Large & Mini widgets that have been embedded on other sites
  • duration of visit – know how long your tours are being viewed!
  • referring URL – the web page the user came from, like your post on Craigslist, your blog, etc.

Note: stats are not counted when you are logged into TourVista and viewing your own tours.

It’s easy to filter your viewing statistics by date. Filter by:

  • today
  • last week
  • last month
  • last 2 months
  • last 3 months
  • all time
  • custom date range
  

Select "Tour Views" from the drop down menu.
Select “Tour Views” from the drop down menu.

Hope you like. Any suggestions? Let us know.

#2: Now accepting huge photos

Some of TourVista’s users were uploading really large photos (3000 x 2500 pixels) for their virtual tours and these photos were too large for TourVista.com to process, resize and display.  We’ve fixed this issue and the website now accepts very large photos.  Yay!

Photography tip: if your photos are meant just for the Internet, there’s no need to make them so large. Really large photos are bad because they:

  1. use up your camera’s memory card quicker
  2. take longer to transfer from your camera to your computer
  3. take up more space on your computer
  4. take longer to upload to TourVista.com

If your photos are meant for print (fliers, magazines, etc.) then you should take them at a large size (a.k.a. large resolution).  But if just for the web, 1600 x 1200 pixels is plenty large.  TourVista will resize your photos to 800 x 600 pixels anyways.  This is the largest photo size the website currently allows, as shown on the virtual tour slideshow.

#1: Video processing message

Now when you upload a video to your virtual tour, a “Processing…” message shows until your video has been transcoded and is ready to be displayed. Unlike some sites that make you wait an hour (or more!) for your video to show, TourVista displays your video in just a few minutes.

1,000 Little Things: Inspiration from Sonny Kobe Cook

I saw a keynote by Sonny Kobe Cook (the founder of Sleep Country USA) in 2007 and of the many great ideas she shared, one in particular stands out to this day. Actually, it was a quote on a plaque that she saw in a restaurant years ago:

It’s impossible to be 1,000% better than every other restaurant. Let’s try to be 1% better in 1,000 little ways.

This is good stuff.  And is the inspiration for this new category in TourVista’s Blog: 1,000 Little Things.  While we are constantly working on large improvements to the TourVista website and user experience, it’s rare that a week goes by without a few small tweaks and adjustments as well.  These minor adjustments might not be noticed by most of our users, but they are little nudges forward, continuing to push TourVista and our user experience in the best direction possible.

We already have a category devoted to TourVista’s major improvements, but I thought it would be useful to show you the small improvements we are making as well.

Please let us know what you think and if you have ideas for improvements to TourVista (small or large) we’d love to hear ’em.

Create a free virtual tour in 2 minutes!

A few weeks ago I put the final touches on TourVista’s new and improved Free Virtual Tour.  I’ve never seen a better or more simple interface for setting up a virtual tour (if you have, let me know!). Here’s a video demo of me creating a virtual tour in 2 minutes:

Give it a shot yourself: www.tourvista.com/free-virtual-tour

The highlights of our new Free Virtual Tour experience:

No account required to get started
Don’t you just hate websites that make you sign up before you can do anything?  We do, too. TourVista allows users to setup and preview a free virtual tour before they create an account.

Save your virtual tour if you like it
Create a free account and your tour will be automatically saved and ready for you to make additional edits and start marketing it immediately.

Really cool preview
3 previews of your tour in the making are displayed on the upload page. Notice as you upload photos that the tour previews update showing thumbnails of your uploaded photos!

3 virtual tours in 1
Every virtual tour created on TourVista is actually 3 virtual tours:

  1. a dedicated website for your property
  2. a large widget
  3. a mini widget

The widgets are portable versions of your virtual tour that you can embed elsewhere on the Internet. Just copy/paste a single line of code to show your virtual tour on other websites.

Ready to hit the market
In less than 2 minutes, your virtual tour is ready to be marketed online.  Craigslist, large & mini widgets, dedicated property website, and more. Of course, you can add tons of additional information about your property including more photos, descriptions, video, and interactive floor plans.

Less is More: The Googley Design Principles

Anyone who uses the Internet is familiar with the simplicity of Google’s websites and graphic designs.  Nothing fancy going on here, just the information you need laid out in an easy to digest format.  Very little color, artistry or other graphic elements.  Some may even knock Google for this.  But in the age of information (and very limited attention spans) a lot of the time, less is truly more.

I put these on our blog as more of a reminder for the TourVista crew, but it also makes an interesting blog post.  Here are The Googley Design Principles:

  1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
  2. Every millisecond counts.
  3. Simplicity is powerful.
  4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
  5. Dare to innovate.
  6. Design for the world.
  7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
  8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
  9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
  10. Add a human touch.