Category: Interactive Floor Plans

Interactive floor plans are easy to setup, even if you don’t have floor plan graphics

Dec28

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 created from a hand-drawn sketch — 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 $50 per graphic. For example, a two story home would cost $100 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. View the virtual tour with interactive floor plan. — Example of a floor plan graphic created from a hand-drawn sketch.

Floor Plan Graphic — Another example of a floor plan

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.

#7: Creating floor plans from sketches in Photoshop

Jul06

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:

take a picture of the sketch from straight above
open picture in Photoshop and crop it; leave a small padding for the borders and dimensions should be at least 500px. if long and narrow, consider rotating it 90 degrees
add guides for each wall
draw exterior & interior walls on their own layers. hold “shift” key and click away
add room name labels
export for web as .gif
save .psd for future reference
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.

Create interactive floor plans from your property photos

Apr24

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:

Real Estate Video Tours with Interactive Floor Plans – The Ultimate Virtual Tour

Jan14

More information is better for the buyer AND the seller
Shopping online for real estate has always been a guessing game. The buyer is left to make their best guess about which homes are actually worth seeing in person. An online listing can increase the quality of its leads generated by providing as much information as possible. A virtual tour with interactive floor plans helps to minimize the guesswork and provides prospective buyers with the next best thing to actually being there in person.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million
Online videos for marketing real estate make sense because video provides more information than photos alone. Photos show the quality and craftsmanship of a home, but there is no connectivity between the rooms. The buyer has no idea where they are when looking at photos, and is left to guess how the rooms relate to each other. The overall “flow” and feeling of the home is missing in photos alone.

A video walk through provides the buyer with the sense that they are actually walking through the home. It is a continuous experience that simulates what it feels like to tour the home in person. Video tells a better story about the layout and connectivity of a home by providing a more interactive and informative viewing experience.

Video is good, but something is missing
What’s missing is a viewer-controlled navigation or “map” that allows the buyer to see the layout of the home and provides the ability to jump to any scene in the video. Without this map, navigating a 2-4 minute video of an unfamiliar home can be quite awkward. Unless one is paying very close attention during the entire video, it’s easy to get lost.

It’s also difficult to navigate a video using the time bar. Imagine watching a video of the perfect home, and wanting to show the kitchen scene to another person. How does one know where the kitchen scene begins in the video? Individual scenes must be manually located by dragging the time bar back and forth, a tedious process.

The Interactive Floor Plan Saves the Day
Both problems of getting lost and jumping to a specific scene in the video are solved when using an interactive floor plan. The floor plan graphic “lights up” to show the buyer the current room as shown in the video. A quick glance at the highlighted section of the floor plan orients the buyer and improves the touring experience.

Additionally, buyers can jump to any scene in the video tour by clicking on the interactive floor plan. Buyers take control of their video tour experience, seeing the specific rooms of the home in their desired order. One can jump from the master bedroom to the kitchen and then out to the back yard, all with a few clicks of the mouse.

Online real estate shopping has never been easier nor has it provided the audience with as much information as contained in a video tour with interactive floor plans.

View a video tour with an interactive floor plan and experience the difference compared to a regular listing of just photos or video alone.