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Guide Virtual Reality WP VR

How To Create A Virtual Car Showroom – Virtual Reality (VR) In Automotive Industry [2024]

Large car brands such as BMW, Ford, Tesla, Audi, and many others are already using VR technology to promote their latest car models.

It is estimated that the automotive VR industry will see a 79% growth in annual revenue by 2026.

If you are a car dealer or own a car showroom, then you too should consider embracing VR technology to increase your chances of closing the deal.

If you have a WordPress site, then you will be glad to know that there is a reliable tool that will help you create your own virtual car showroom easily, without any high costs. (Learn about it later in this article.)

In this article, I will give you insights into virtual car showrooms and the step-by-step process of creating a VR Car showroom on your own in WordPress easily.

So let’s begin.

Why now is the right time for your business to consider a virtual car showroom?

COVID-19 accelerated the already popular tendency of purchasing expensive goods before seeing them.

2020 saw the debut of virtual car showrooms from Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, and Nissan.

Even if the pandemic slowed down, it’s clear that changes in buyer behavior have already changed a lot and increased the trust level in off-seen buying.

All calls to action (CTAs) that a car brand needs from “schedule a virtual appointment,” “set up a demonstration,” or direct customers to the checkout counter if they are ready to commit to a mission can be done with a virtual car showroom.

All you need to gather the right knowledge about an ideal interactive car showroom.

What Is An Ideal Interactive Virtual Car Showroom

A modern-day virtual car showroom is where you create an interactive tour with various views within your VR car showroom, and visitors will be able to move from one scene to another and navigate a 360-degree view.

With an interactive virtual car showroom, you can :

  • Develop an immersive virtual showroom with 360-degree panoramic views
  • Integrate interactive hotspots for additional information, videos, or audio
  • Create detailed 3D models of car interiors for each vehicle
  • Allow visitors to “enter” virtual car interiors with 360-degree views
  • Optimize for various VR headsets and devices
  • Incorporate gamification elements and analytics tracking
  • Consider e-commerce integration for car configuration and purchases

Here’s an example of what we are discussing here:

As you can see, this creates a user-friendly environment where the viewer will feel like he is taking a real tour.

Now, he could be sitting comfortably at home or, maybe, taking a coffee break at the office and visiting via a mobile phone or simply searching for his ideal car with his wife. The fact is, he will not be in a hurry and will be in a state of mind where he can choose a car with some real thought.

The tour will help highlight the main features of the car and allow him to picture how he can expect the car to be in real life. Thus, once he decides on a car, it will be a real decision to buy, not a dilemma of whether he wants a car or not.

So in a sense, the virtual car showroom tour is more of a passive sales pitch to attract real buyers.

Now, let us look at how you can create a virtual car showroom easily, on your WordPress site.

Step By Step Guide To Create A Virtual Car Showroom

When creating a virtual car showroom tour, it’s crucial to use a tool that is easy to use and does not hamper the quality of the environment.

In WordPress, you’ll find WPVR, is one of the easiest virtual tour builders out there.

Using this tool, you can turn a 360 panoramic image into a 360 virtual tour with just a few clicks.

In the next few steps, you will learn how you can use WPVR to create virtual car showroom tours on WordPress.

So let’s begin.

Step 1 – Get WPVR And Install & Activate It On Your WordPress Site

You will need to first install and activate WPVR free version from the WordPress repository.

Simply go to Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and search for WPVR. It should appear as the first option. Install and activate it.

Next, you need to get WPVR Pro.
The free version will let you create a simple virtual tour. The Pro plugin will let you add all the amazing elements to make the tour more engaging such as an explainer video, contact form support, hotspot icon customization, etc.

Once you have purchased WPVR Pro, install and activate it as well. Then activate your license key to get access to all of its premium features.

Step 2 – Configure WPVR For Best Output

Before creating your VR car showroom, configure WPVR for a better output in the General Setup Options.

VR Car Showroom - Advanced Settings

Make sure the following options are enabled:

  • Mobile Menu Resizer:
    This will ensure your virtual tour is optimized for mobile devices.
  • Disable WordPress Large Image Handler on WP VR:
    WordPress normally compresses image files. Enabling this option will mean when you will upload 360 images, they will not be compressed, thus maintaining a high quality of the tour.
  • Disable On Hover Content for Mobile:
    This option is useful because there is no option to hover on mobile devices. So it’s rather wise to disable it.
  • Front End Notice for Mobile Users:
    A notice to ask viewers to rotate the mobile to landscape view will help to improve their experience.

Step 3 – Create The First Scene Of Your Virtual Car Showroom Tour

Now, in less than a few minutes, we’ll make a simple virtual car showroom tour.

Hover on the WP VR menu in your WordPress Dashboard and select Add New Tour.

Create a new Virtual Car Showroom

You will be taken on a new tour and initially, you will be in the Basic Settings tab on the General menu.

Creating virtual car showroom
  • Add a Title to your virtual tour.
  • Enable the Auto Rotation & keep the speed slow. We recommend keeping it to -5.
  • Add a Preview image. This will act as a placeholder when you place the tour on a page. People can click on it to access the tour.

You can create a custom image to use as a preview image where you can include a cool image of your showroom and add a CTA text saying “Take a virtual tour and be amazed by your favorite cars” or something along that line.

Step 4 – Upload Your 360 Image And Create A Scene

Scenes are the part where the images will be uploaded.

  • Select the Scenes option.
  • Create a distinct Scene ID (Without any special characters and spaces).
  • Select the first panorama image of your flat by clicking the Upload button under the Scene Upload area.
Upload image of VR Auto
  • After the image has finished uploading, scroll down and click on the Preview button.
Preview of VR Car Showroom
Type caption (optional)
  • You’ll see a live preview of the tour in the Tour Preview section. You can move around this basic tour and use basic controls.
  • Give a Title of the image to showcase the name and Update.
Title for VR car showroom
Type caption (optional)

That’s it. See, how easy it was to create the virtual tour?

Let’s add more features and control options to make this a complete virtual car showroom tour. Here are the details:

Advanced Controls

Go to General > Advanced Control tab and enable these features:

  • Scene Gallery: Scene Gallery will let you keep an inside image of a car in the picture gallery.
  • Gyroscope: Gyroscope Feature will let you load the car showroom on Mobile.
  • Explainer Video: With the Explainer video, you can add explained details of the car.
  • Add Company Info: Time for the branding of your organization. Company info is very important while showcasing the car.
  • Tour Background Music: Tour Background Music will help with the engagement of clients.

Control Buttons

Now, Go to the Control Buttons tab.

Keep all the options enabled in this section. Go through the Navigational Features to understand how the control buttons will work for your own VR Car Showroom.

Extra Tips:

  • Author and Author URL fields are necessary when there are dedicated authors for images.
  • Default Scene Face will set a default scene for every tour.
  • With Customize Scene Zoom, you’ll receive three new options that let you adjust the zoom level to your preference. This Customize Scene Zoom will help you with the details.
  • You can now add additional panorama images to this VR Car Showroom tour by adding more scenes and different parameters.
Advanced Setting - VR Automotive Showroom
Type caption (optional)

Step 4 – Use Hotspots – Connect Panorama Images with Hotspots to Display Additional Information

Since you’re building a Car Showroom tour, it’s time for you to show the cars and their details. Let’s work with one car for now. To add a hotspot you’ll need to go to the hotspot section and add one.

  • Give an ID for the Hotspot. Note: The ID should be one word without any special characters.
  • Add Pitch & Yaw from the section of the panorama where you want to place the hotspot.
Information inside car showroom virtual tour
Type caption (optional)
  • Now scroll down, then you can add a custom icon. And on hover content write what you want to display when your clients hover on the hotspot. The best part is you can add images, and gif files as well.
Custom hotspot - VR Auto
Type caption (optional)

Let’s add another hotspot and see how it looks on the frontend:

Detailed information - VR Car
Type caption (optional)

Tip: I’ve added engine details in the hotspot as well. If you want to showcase the car features individually, you can do it this way.

You can even showcase the inside image of a car by moving from one scene to another. For this, you’ll need to use the Scene Type Hotspot.

You can also add a URL link to a Car’s product page from where the client can directly purchase the car.

Link to Car details
Type caption (optional)

Now, you’ve created a complete VR car showroom. And the next move would be to impress your customer with your presentation or answers and close the deal.

Yes, you still need to put in some effort to close the deal, but you can see how a virtual tour can reduce the amount of effort you would normally need to invest in convincing the buyer who just walked into your showroom to view cars.

Follow this simple guide to easily add contact forms inside virtual tours.

Some Components You Should Include In Your VR Car Showroom

Components of VR Automotive Showroom

Now, that you have understood the process,

let’s go through the components you should include in your VR car showroom.

  • Car description
    This may include the base price, real-life photos of the car in use, promo video, model no., details on design (interior & exterior), engine type, performance, comfort, safety, specifications, etc.
  • Client Experience Video
    You may include a testimonial video of a real buyer who used the car and was satisfied
  • Introductory Explainer Video With Recommendations
    You could include an explainer video to invite your buyer in and recommend some of your cars for various cases, such as suggesting a certain Sports car for more speed or another car for a better luxury interior, or you can even suggest the newest model in your showroom.
  • Include Showroom Address And Directions
    You can include your company information, contact numbers, and a link to directions for your showroom within the virtual tour.
  • Booking form for test drive or appointment
    As mentioned earlier, you can allow the prospect to book a time for a test drive, an online meeting, or even a meeting in person.

How Can A VR Car Showroom Help To Increase Car Sales

VR Car Showroom - Increase Car Sales

So far, you already learned how to create a VR car showroom.

Let’s discuss the reasons why you must consider using one.

1. Create A Meaningful Experience For Potential Buyers

Any brand new car looks awesome in photographs. But then why does a buyer reject cars when visiting in person?

Yes, the price may be a factor to think about at times, and that is something you can’t avoid. But there is more to it than just the price.

The fact is, when a person thinks of buying a car, he tries to imagine himself with the car, either sitting inside or standing by it.

An image can always mislead the prospect into imagining something more than what it is. But, a virtual tour will give him a more realistic idea of how the car actually looks. And an interior tour will help him decide if he is ready for a test drive or if the interior is not cozy enough for him.

Plus, for high-end buyers, the virtual tour will help them judge if the car goes with their profile.

2. Provide Relevant Details Than Can Drive Decisions

When choosing a car, a person also wants to ensure it has the right features and specifications.

For example, if someone is looking to purchase a Super Car, he will surely want to know about its engine, zero to hundred calculation, horsepower, etc.

You can include them as hotspots that prospects can click or hover to read. You can also include audio explaining its features. An even more engaging approach would be to include a click-to-view promo video on your cars.

If you can provide the right details along with the virtual tour, it will make it a lot easier to trigger a temporary decision from the buyer.

Also, a custom automotive software development can be integrated with car OS, these interactive elements can reshape even more towards the unique selling points of each vehicle, enhancing user engagement and driving informed purchase decisions. Additionally, software development analytics tools can analyze interactions and provide valuable insights into buyer preferences and behavior. This data helps to improve user engagement and purchase decisions.

3. Give A Complete Car Showroom Experience

You can take the experience one step further by allowing the prospect to book a test drive or a direct call with you or even allow him/her to submit questions for you to answer later.

All you have to do is to add a booking form or contact form within your tour, where the buyer can choose a suitable schedule or simply submit questions that you can later answer via email or phone call.

This will give you the added benefit of having a list of leads that are genuinely interested in buying a car that’s in your showroom.

At the end of this guide, I will explain how you can easily set up contact forms in your virtual car showroom to allow potential customers to reach you easily.

Additionally, consider adding a total loss calculator to your virtual showroom. This will enable prospects to get an estimate of their potential insurance payout or trade-in value directly on your site, enhancing transparency and trust.

Exploring partnerships with junkyards in Hawaii could further enhance the virtual showroom experience by providing users access to a wider range of parts and salvage vehicles, smoothly integrated with the virtual environment to offer comprehensive solutions for both buyers and sellers.

Conclusion

The VR automotive industry is quite on the boom and you can tag along by using virtual tours for your car showroom (if you haven’t already).

The amount of engagements you can make with a virtual car showroom tour is immense compared to a normal website. Plus, as you saw, it is so easy and affordable to create a virtual car showroom tour.

So it’s high time for you to start using VR technology to drive more sales.

This could be a game-changer in helping you attract more potential buyers and increase your car sales.

Categories
Guide Virtual Reality WP VR

How To Create A 360 Car View On Your Website – Increase Car Sales With Virtual Reality (VR)

A virtual car showroom will help you display all your available cars to potential buyers.

But, how a car looks from the outside is only half the experience.

People who are passionate about cars are also concerned about the interior.

So, you can adopt one of the most innovative ways to take your client’s experience to the next level – a 360-degree car view.

Normally, your potential buyers stay 5 to 10 times longer on your virtual tour if you can make it more interactive.

Adding a 360-degree car view to your VR car showroom will double the interaction with your buyers.

In this article, you will learn how you can create and use 360 car views easily in your WordPress site, and how you can optimize it for better conversion.

So let’s get started.

How Using Car Interior 360 Views Can Enhance The Experience of Your Customers

Adding a 360-degree interior view of the car to your online showcase to make customers interested in exploring it.

You can also use hotspots to highlight and explain interior features to demonstrate your expertise.

Instead of just giving brochures or lists, you’ll provide an interactive experience to your customers.

This interactive experience creates an emotional connection, making customers more eager to engage with you.

If customers are interested in buying, they are likely to contact you to schedule a test drive.

Busy professionals may not have time to visit a showroom, but if you could offer a virtual showroom with 360 views that will allow them to inspect cars closely online.

After inspecting cars virtually, your convinced customers will make time for an in-person test drive.

So, as you can see virtual 360 car showcases create more opportunities for sales by engaging your customers interactively.

How To Create A 360 Car View Easily In WordPress

Now, it’s time for you to create a 360 Car view on your own.

We recommend that you use the best tool available for WordPress which is WPVR.

Follow these steps with me and your 360-degree car view will be ready without any headache.

Step 1 – Install & Activate WP VR

The first task is for you to install and activate WPVR on your end.

Here’s the guide for you to follow to install & activate WPVR.

Step 2 – Add New Tour

Once you’ve installed and activated WP VR on your WordPress Website, you’ll see that WP VR has been added to your dashboard.

Hover over WP VR and Select “Add New Tour”

Add New 360 Car View

After Adding a new tour, you’ll be redirected into a new window. Here, you’ll have to add the title of the tour along with a Scene.

Step 3 – Add Scene & Publish

Upload 360 View of a Car & Preview

Here,

  • Add a title of the Tour.
  • Click Upload to Add a Scene for the 360 virtual tours of a car.
  • Then click Preview to check how it looks.
Preview & Publish 360 Car View

Once you’ve clicked on the preview, you’ll get to see a tour preview of how the car 360 view will look at the front end. If everything seems fine, then move on and Hit Publish.

Step 4 – Add Hotspots

Hotspots are specific precise pointers that you can add to your virtual tours by focusing on an element.

After uploading a scene, click on the Hotspot tab under the Scenes Tab:

Add Hotspot to Car Interior

Let’s say you want to add a hotspot to your car seat. So now you have to,

  • Add a Hotspot ID.
  • Select the coordinates of the elements which are Pitch & Yaw.
  • You can also add a custom icon and a custom icon color.
  • Add On Hover and On Click Content. There are options to add texts, images, and videos as content.
  • Once you’re done click update and the hotspot will be added.

Let’s have a look at the frontend view of this hotspot:

Hotspot on Car Interior 360 View

And this is how video content looks on a hotspot:

Hotspot Video on 360 View of a Car

The opportunity to highlight each car is greatly increased by the video content on hotspots.

Add complete car video reviews or add distinct videos of the internal features like seats, air conditioning, music system, etc with video hotspots.

The Free Version of this tool will give you all the necessary features to create a car interior 360 view.

But if you upgrade to WPVR Pro, you can customize and personalize your virtual tours using its advanced features.

Make The 360 Car View More Interactive

Once you have the basic 360 views ready, you next have to put some effort into making it more interactive and interesting.

i. Add Contact Forms

Let’s say your showroom offers a test drive before purchasing a car.

Or you simply want to add a contact now section in your car tour. You’ll find these options in WPVR.

You can set a contact form inside car 360 views using the WPVR Fluent Forms Add-on.

Contact Form in 360 Car View

ii. Explainer Video To Add A Detailed Video

Include a thorough video explaining your services and the available cars that the buyer may see as they are taking the car 360-degree tour.

iii. Make The Tour Pleasant With Soothing Music

While taking the tour of the VR Car, you have the option to add background music inside the tour. This way, your clients will be able to enjoy the 360-degree view with a delightful mind.

iv. Add Exterior & Interior Scenes In One Virtual Tour

The best part of having a virtual tour in a car showroom is that you can add interior and exterior 360 views of cars in a single tour.

With the Scene Gallery Feature of WP VR, you can take the interior and exterior panorama images of a car and add them to a single virtual tour.

You can also make the tour more engaging by giving titles of each scene.

Panorama Gallery on 360 Car View

v. Display Brand Company Logo & Information

How can you market your company if the branding is missing in the virtual tour?

Now, you can add the logo and the details of your company with WP VR. It’ll help you with your car dealing goals.

vi. Optimize The 360 Car View For Smartphones

Gyroscope support is an iconic feature that will let you optimize the 360 Car View for your smartphone. Clients will be able to check out the interactive tour from anywhere they want.

Tips To Capture Great 360 Images Of A Car Interior

The first thing for creating a perfect 360 view of a car is to take a good panorama picture of a car’s interior.

To take one, you will need a 360-degree camera. You will find several such cameras at affordable prices out there.

Check Out Awesome Virtual Tour Cameras For Your VR Car Showroom Photography.

Once you got the most suitable camera for you, here are some tips to help you take the 360 images properly.

i. Make Sure You Have Proper Light Sources When Capturing The Photo

Taking high-quality panoramic pictures in a car will be a challenge for you since there is no wide space inside the car. So, you need to be very cautious, especially with the lighting.

When taking an exterior panoramic image, make sure to turn off any interior lights to avoid disruption between artificial and natural lighting. However, it’s best not to rely on outdoor lighting. Rather, turn on lights in your showroom, and make sure there is enough light to avoid dull images.

While taking the interior images, you can either attach an LED light to the roof of the car, or you may arrange studio lighting. For convertibles, studio lighting is the best option.

Make sure to maintain constant light intensity to avoid fuzzy images.

ii. Remove Unknown Objects From The Car Before Shooting

Most people do a great job of keeping their cars clean, but what they miss are the reflections.

Cars with reflective body paint or mirrors are hard to shoot and you have to make sure to remove any unwanted object that may cause the reflection to look ugly.

The best way to justify this would be to first, take a video of the car and see if any spot looks distracting. Find out what objects around it is causing the odd reflection and try to move it away from the shooting area.

iii. Try To Cover All The Interior Features in The 360 View

The image you take should clearly highlight the most notable interior features of the car. Lighting, again, plays a strong part in this, hence you need to pay attention to the lighting a lot when taking interior images. You do not want any area to get shaded due to lack of lighting.

This is especially important because when you create a car 360 view, you would want to use tooltips to explain and highlight the best interior features of the car. This will help to get the buyer more interested in the car.

When you can show interior features properly it will increase your car value. If you don’t know how to calculate your car value you can use the scrap car value calculator to get an idea of your car and can sell or show your car to the right audience easily.

Author’s Note

It’s high time you start using optimized VR Car Showrooms that can help you grow your business significantly. As a car dealer, you will definitely see more car sales. And it will help to trigger many businessmen to finally take a decision on buying their dream car from your showroom.

As you saw above, it’s super easy to create a 360-degree view on your own. So get WPVR now and create the best virtual tour for your car showroom.

Got queries? Let us know in the comments how you feel about car 360 views.

Categories
Guide Real Estate Virtual Reality WP VR

Do Virtual Tours Help Sell Houses in 2025? Let’s See How!

Do virtual tours help sell houses?

Spoiler alert: They absolutely do.

Imagine you’re trying to sell a house with just photos—like convincing someone to buy a car by only showing the tires.

But it’s 2025 and the buyers want more. They want to step inside, walk through the rooms, and picture where their favorite chair will go.

And there’s no alternative to virtual tours in this case. You can think of them as your 24/7 open house—accessible anytime, anywhere.

In this guide, I’ll cover:

✅ How virtual tours build buyer confidence

✅ Why they can lead to quicker offers

✅ What makes them a must-have for today’s home sales

By the end, you’ll see how virtual tours aren’t just a convenience—they’re a powerful sales tool.

Let’s get started.

How Do Virtual Tours Help Sell Houses?

As I’ve mentioned earlier, virtual home tours are the latest and the most credible way to promote your homes for sale.

They offer an interactive, immersive experience that static photos just can’t match.

Let’s break down exactly how virtual tours help you sell houses more effectively:

 1. Attract More Potential Buyers

Potential Buyers Will Prefer Using Virtual Home Tours

The only visual your customers before visiting are the photos you put up on your site.

Once they visit, if it doesn’t meet their expectations, they reject the offer in most cases.

This is a clear indication that people’s interest mostly depends on what expectations you can create in their minds about the property before they choose to visit.

Sell more properties with WPVR

If you include a virtual home tour, the person viewing will be able to experience a realistic tour of the house while sitting at home.

They’ll be able to get a complete visual of how the house will look when they actually visit in person.

Now this will give you 3 major advantages:

  • The person will stay longer on your site when exploring the virtual tour. Hence he/she will get more time to choose on your site and probably, eventually, get interested. The fact is the more you spend time, the more attractive it gets.
  • People calling with any inquiry will have a good tour around the house. Hence, they calling means they are probably highly interested, and the house satisfies their requirements. Now, giving them further details will be worthwhile.
  • Since you have a virtual tour, anyone asking to take a visit is probably interested in buying the house and you will have a higher chance of closing the deal. This is because the viewer will be able to get a good visual of the house and his/her expectations will match when he/she actually visits. Thus increasing the chance of buying.

And this is how virtual home tours can make a big difference and will certainly increase potential buyers.

If you include a virtual home tour, the person viewing will be able to experience a realistic tour of the house while sitting at home.

They’ll be able to get a complete visual of how the house will look when they actually visit in person.

2. Showcase Spatial Flow and Layout

If you put only photographs, You must need to know that comes up with some limitations such as:

  • Inability to fully demonstrate the transition and flow from one room to another.
  • Incapability to present every angle and perspective of a room.
  • Difficulty in assessing whether furniture will fit a space based solely on photos.
  • Lack of detailed information about the home’s amenities.

And with virtual home tours, buyers to feel as if they are physically present in the property. They can control the tour and explore the flow, spatial context, and size.

3. Empower Buyers to Explore What They Want

With photos and videos, Your site represents what you want to portray. Not what your customer wants to see.

But on a virtual tour, Your customers can control what they want to see. Buying a new home is as much an emotional decision as it is a financial one. Your customers what to take time while inspecting your house.

This freedom of choosing and exploring at their own desire will definitely get you more buyers.

4. Focus More on Closing Deals

Home Sells Itself
A virtual home tour will increase your closing rate.

Virtual Tours of Homes for sale can save you a lot of time and effort and will let you focus more on increasing your business revenue.

Now that you know that the person you will be dealing with already got a virtual tour, you can focus on closing deals, go for negotiations, and give extra details about the house, such as its history or neighborhood. 

You do not need to spend hours over the phone trying to convince people with details about the house itself.

The virtual home selling goes through virtual tours. People calling has developed a genuine interest.

All you need to do now is set up a visit and work on closing the deal.

The moment a customer steps foot in the house, he/she will know that this is exactly what they experienced in the virtual tour and exactly what he/she visualized about the home that got them interested in the first place.

Hence, you will have a better chance of closing deals.

5. Boost Follow-up Response Rates

Increased Followup Response

As a realtor, you are always busy speaking with clients who are interested to buy homes.

You probably get people leaving messages on your site about inquiries or through e-mails.

And sometimes you get calls, while you are trying to close a deal, which you can’t answer and they leave voicemails.

All of these are hard to follow up on.

You need to list them and then get back to them, hoping that they are still interested.

And more often, people don’t respond to your attempt to follow up with them unless they are really interested. 

This means that you have no way of knowing the level of interest a person has when they made the inquiry, although it’s obvious that they are willing to buy a house sooner or later.

Having virtual home tours can make a big difference when you sell property virtually.

You can be sure that the people inquiring, after taking a virtual tour, are probably interested to a great extent since they saw exactly what they will get, and probably that’s what they were looking for.

Hence, you will get a better response when you reach back.

6. Help Buyers Make Faster, Informed Decisions

Take Informed Decision

Even though you put well-crafted details on your sites, your potential customers will not be sure what they want and will probably visit several homes before making a decision.

But if you use virtual tours, your buyers will be able to get a detailed view of the house; a realistic visual which he/she will not get from other property listing sites.

So, that prospect might develop an instant interest and probably stop looking elsewhere.

7. Make It Easier to Promote Your Business

Promote Business Easily

Since virtual tours are still pretty new, a lot of realtors are yet to make proper use of them.

If you choose to use virtual tours on your site, you will be taking one step ahead of the lot.

You will have a strong marketing value point, that you offer virtual home tours to visitors.

People will be able to make an informed decision when using your site.

You will be able to stand out in the industry since people will find you more reliable.

Creating Virtual Home Tours – More Affordable And Easier Than You Think

Well, You must be thinking creating virtual video tours will require you to hire an expensive video crew or production house.

Creating a 3D model dollhouse requires you to hire experts in that field.

No, You don’t need to.

Virtual tours have a new meaning now.

Now there are several real estate virtual tour creator tools out there that will allow you to create virtual tours on your own, without the need of hiring an expert, and at a reasonably low cost.

You can give “WPVR” a try. The user interface is very easy and will make it super easy for you to create virtual home tours when selling properties.

WP VR – Quality Virtual Tour Creator for WordPress 

Use WP VR to create virtual home tours and sell properties easily.

Using WPVR, all you need is to take 360 panoramic images of all the rooms in a home, and some from outside the house, and upload them to the plugin.

If you have any specific information to provide, let’s say the history of the design of the fireplace, you can set a small icon to click on, to view that information.

Not only that, you can add an explainer video on your virtual tour.

You can also add a virtual floor plan on your virtual tour using WPVR. Also, with WPVR you can publish your tour anywhere, anytime. And share with people with a QR code.

You will not need any assistance from experts, you will be able to create the tour on your own, and that too in a very short amount of time.

For your busy customers, you can add a direct CTA button link with your virtual home tour.

Conclusion

As you can see, virtual tours are very useful and innovative.

You can definitely find more interested customers than usual and will have a greater conversion than what you have without virtual tours.

Plus, they are cost-effective and easy to create If you choose the right tool like WPVR.

So, include virtual home tours on your website, you will surely get more business and go ahead of other realtors in your area.

**You can also check out this complete guide on how to create a virtual tour to get in-depth knowledge of all necessary tools and activities required for creating a virtual tour from scratch (i.e. from taking pics to using virtual tours).

Hence, embrace virtual tours as soon as possible and you will benefit from it no doubt.  

FAQs

Do virtual tours help sell houses faster?

Yes, virtual tours attract more serious buyers and help them make quicker decisions, speeding up the sales process.

How do virtual tours increase buyer interest?

They offer detailed, realistic views of properties, helping buyers feel more confident and connected to the home.

Can virtual tours replace in-person visits?

They can’t fully replace visits but help buyers shortlist homes and save time by narrowing down options.

Are virtual tours expensive to create?

It depends, but many affordable options exist with tools and services designed for realtors.

Do virtual tours make a listing stand out?

Yes, they add a unique, interactive experience that can set your listing apart from others.

Categories
Virtual Reality WP VR

How To Create A VR Museum Tour To Increase Live Visitors [2025]

What if your museum could attract visitors from all over the world—without them even stepping inside first?

Let’s be real: getting foot traffic isn’t easy. Locals might stop by, but how do you turn your museum into a must-visit destination for travelers from other cities (or even countries)?

Simple: a VR Museum Tour.

Imagine someone in Paris, Tokyo, or New York stumbles upon your virtual museum tour. They explore your best exhibits, get immersed in fascinating stories, and suddenly, they’re obsessed. Next thing you know, they’re planning a trip just to see it in real life.

And the best part? You don’t need to digitize everything!

Just highlight your most captivating collections, add rich storytelling, and let the power of VR do the heavy lifting.

Ready to make history irresistible? Let’s dive into how you can create a VR museum tour in WordPress—easily and effectively.

Why Use VR Museum Tours?

A virtual museum will let your visitors go around and explore the museum just like they would in person while sitting comfortably at home.

More importantly, it comes with several significant benefits, such as :

i. Help Attract More Visitors From All Over The World

If you are someone related to public museums, you must know public museums act as a great attraction for tourists, which generates museum revenue and boosts the local economy.

Some museums even charge higher fees for foreign visitors as an additional income source.

If you are someone related to universities or large organizations, you must want to attract international students and culture-loving local students, or charity farms.

Whichever purpose you may have, you would definitely want to attract more visitors.

This is where virtual reality plays a big part.

If you create a Virtual Reality Museum of your original one, it will help attract people from all over the world.

And, if you can promote it actively, you will start seeing more and more prospects inquiring about a visit.

ii. Get Tickets Booked Online

You could easily integrate an online ticketing system into your virtual museum so that visitors can get tickets while taking the tour.

This means, that as soon as someone gets interested in your museum, they will be able to collect tickets and start planning their schedule to visit.

It will avoid too much confusion and make long-distance visitors more comfortable to travel & explore the full collection in person.

iii. Educate About Local History And Culture

It is important that people know about their history. Yes, people do learn a bit from school. But, it’s even better if they can get a visualized experience.

So, if you are willing to spread more knowledge about your local cultural history, creating a virtual tour would be great.

You may create a custom environment with historical figures and monuments in the tour, along with tooltips and click-to-view text or video to learn more about each character/item.

This will be super useful for students to learn with more interest, and help keep the locals well-informed about their own history.

**You can even create a premium VR museum experience where people may pay a small amount to get access to the complete museum in VR rather than partial access to some of the collections.

iv. A Great Medium To Preserve History Online

You never know how long you can preserve the actual historical items or monuments.

Books may whither away or museums may shut down. But, if you create a VR museum, that piece of history will remain online as long as you have your website.

So, this is a great way to preserve history.

v. Tie It Up With Premium Packages In Universities or Virtual Learning Schools

Some universities are creating custom virtual museums (with no physical local) that cover almost any historical items, characters, or events. This, they may offer as part of their paid packets.

Make Online Ticketing System For Virtual Museums

Similarly, education is now very popular online. Certain virtual schools may include access to a VR museum on certain subscription levels.

**You can also create a detailed online virtual museum and sell it to educational institutions on a subscription basis. This will allow universities to educate their students more effectively while you have a good source of income.

As you saw, you will get benefit if you create a virtual museum.

Now, let’s learn how you can create a VR museum for your WordPress site step by step.

How To Create A VR Museum That Will Hook More Visitors

Let’s kick things off with the most important piece of the puzzle: the visual experience.

1. Use High Quality 360 Panorama Image For Your Museum Virtual Tour

To create a virtual tour of your museum, you first need the right equipment to capture 360 panoramic images of the areas you want to include in this online tour.

2. Use A Reliable VR Tool

Once you have your images ready, you need to use a reliable virtual tour creator. You may use WPVR to convert and connect your panoramas into a virtual tour.

3. Embed This Tour On Your Website, Preferably On The Home Page.

Once your tour is ready, you may easily embed it on any page either using a shortcode or using an Elementor widget/Gutenberg block/other supported page builders.)

4. Make the VR Museum More Attractive & Engaging

The main challenge here is to ensure people spend more time on the tour to build up their interest.
At this point, you may use the following features:

i. Tooltips With Basic Details About The Character/Item

Image Hotspot In vr Museum Tour

Use Click-to-view text/video to get detailed historical knowledge.

You can add tooltips containing on-click and on-hover content inside the virtual tour for your visitors to check the history details of a particular piece of art.

Then again, video content is more interactive for your audience to learn something in detail. Add YouTube & Vimeo videos to the hotspot of your virtual tour.

Video Hotspot In Museum Virtual Tour

ii. Connect All Scenes Into a Journey For People To Visit Around

With Scene Galleries like this, your visitors will be able to move from one scene to another with a click. They don’t need to switch tabs or do a bunch of stuff to go to another section of the museum.

And, not only that, but you can also add titles to each Scene to let your audience know where they are.

Scene Gallery For Online Virtual Museum

iii. Use An Introductory Mini-video To Invite People To Visit Your Museum

You can not only add videos to specific tooltips but also set a mini explainer video globally in your virtual tour for the visitors.

In the video, you may describe what the whole museum is about, the sections it has, and what historical era and its features have been introduced.

Explainer video in Virtual Museum Tour

iv. Add A Floor Plan Of Your Museum For Easier Navigation

Include a floor plan of your museum to indicate the areas available compared to the areas visitors have access to in this VR Museum.

Usually, museums are built in large areas with a lot of units. So, while taking a virtual tour of a museum, your visitors might get confused about how they are going to go forward.

So adding a floor plan will help them go to a section of a museum in less time. By using specific pointers in a Virtual Floor Plan, visitors will be able to click and go to a section instantly.

Floor Plan In Museum Virtual Tour

5. Share Your Virtual Tour With The World

Now that your virtual tour is ready, it’s time to actively promote the page where you embedded the tour. Share that page on social media, VR groups, and other such platforms.

You may even consider running paid Ads to bring in more potential traffic. Since your tour is detailed and well-groomed, you may use proper copy to convince people to take the virtual tour. In the virtual tour, you may add CTAs from time to time and an enhanced ticketing system to allow people to order tickets online.

This will not only attract locals but also be a prime tourist choice for foreigners who visit neighboring areas.

**You may also consider collaborating with a few local and international influencers to spread the word and share your virtual tour. This will help attract a lot more audience than you would normally get. Since they have loyal fans, many will surely try out the virtual tour and, down the line, visit your museum.

And that’s about a virtual museum guide. This way you can easily create and use a virtual museum tour in WordPress to get more visitors and grow your online presence.

More Enhancement Opportunities

If you’d like to enhance the experience of your virtual museum tours more, then you can add these extra enhancements that will make your virtual tours more attractive to your users.

Add Inquiry Forms Inside The Virtual Museum Tours

WPVR allows you to include forms in the tour which you can use to collect inquiries for tickets.

Use Fluent Forms in Virtual Museum Tours

VR Headset Support For Immersive Museum Tour Experience

VR Headset Support will let your visitors experience a virtual tour from a realistic visual standpoint.

Your viewers will be able to move around from one scene to another easily, wearing VR headsets as if they are moving inside the museum itself.

This will benefit people who might not otherwise be able to attend museums due to inconveniences.

Sell From Your Museum Virtual Tour’s Gift Shop

You can also add a scene of your museum’s gift shop and sell souvenirs directly from the museum virtual tour.

Some museums offer Auctions, so you may add the sellable antiques as products and directly let sellers buy them from the Museum Virtual Tour.

What Challenges Do Museums Face With VR?

Now you know how powerful a VR tour can be, but it’s important to understand the challenges you may encounter when creating one for your museum.

These challenges are real, but with the right approach, they’re definitely manageable.

  • Cost: Creating a high-quality VR tour isn’t cheap. Between purchasing equipment and hiring experts, it can be expensive. You’ll need to plan your budget carefully to avoid surprises.
  • Technical Setup: Even with all the tools available, setting up a VR experience requires a bit of technical know-how. You might need some help with the back-end process to get everything running smoothly.
  • Time-Consuming: Capturing 360 images and editing them takes time. It’s not something you can throw together quickly, so be prepared for a bit of a time commitment.
  • User Experience: Not everyone is familiar with VR technology. You’ll need to consider how easy it is for your visitors to navigate the virtual tour and ensure the experience is engaging.

Understanding these challenges up front can help you plan better and set realistic expectations. While there are some hurdles, the rewards of attracting more visitors to your museum are well worth the effort.

Author’s Note

Virtual Museum Tours will be mainstream in the next few years. Visitors will demand them to interact with famous collections in ways that aren’t feasible in physical spaces.

Virtual tours, however, need to be immersive. You must take into account all the mentioned features to design an experience for your visitors that is genuinely engaging.

You must develop interactive user content for your visitors to provide the best online virtual museum tour they can experience.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What features should a VR museum tour have to attract live visitors?

An effective VR museum tour should be highly immersive and visually stunning, providing a realistic and engaging representation of the museum. It should also offer interactive elements, such as audio guides, informative popups, and the ability to zoom in on specific exhibits. Including behind-the-scenes footage or interviews with curators can add depth and intrigue.

Do I need expensive equipment to create a VR museum tour?

No, you can start with a 360-degree camera and basic VR software. High-end setups help, but they’re not mandatory.

Can visitors access the VR tour without a VR headset?

Yes, most VR tours work on desktops, tablets, and smartphones without requiring a headset.

How long does it take to create a VR museum tour?

It depends on the size of your museum, but with the right tools, you can create a basic tour in a few days.

Will a VR tour replace in-person visits?

No, it enhances interest. A well-made VR tour makes people want to visit and see the full experience in person.

Categories
Guide Real Estate Virtual Reality

How to Take A Panoramic Photo with Drones – Guide To Aerial Panorama [2024]

360 panoramic images have changed how people see photography in several businesses. You can easily present properties or various locations in the form of 360 virtual tours thanks to panoramic images.

However, it’s 2024, and now you can take 360 photography to a whole new level. And it’s all thanks to the invention of drones!

That’s right! Drones have grown in popularity over the past few years, and now, you will find several drones that come with high-quality cameras that are perfect for capturing 360 panoramic photos from the air.

If you are part of businesses such as real estate, hotels, resorts, education institutes, etc., then you can get a huge advantage when using aerial photography.

For instance, homes with aerial panorama photos sell 68% faster.

Today, you’ll learn how to take a panoramic photo using a drone, easily capturing stunning wide-angle views.

So let’s begin.

How To Take A Panoramic Photo Using Drones

Drones give you an extra edge in 360 aerial photography because you will be able to capture a panoramic photo that’s more versatile and unique than ever, unlike a regular camera.

For instance, you will be able to take aerial shots and shots from a distance you could never take on your own using a regular 360 camera.

There are three main steps to capturing a 360 panoramic image during a drone shoot:

  1. Choosing a reliable drone with the right 360 camera and lens.
  2. Preparing to capture a 360 panoramic photo using your drone.
  3. Capturing an amazing 360 panorama using your drone.

Let us look at each of them one by one.

1. Choosing A Reliable Drone with The Right 360 Camera & Lens

Since this is about taking panoramic photos, the first thing you need to invest in is a drone suitable to take high-quality 360 panoramic images.

This means you will need to ensure the drone you choose has a proper fish-eye lens along with a stable, high-resolution camera.

Let us look at a couple of drones that you may consider buying for this.

i. DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0

DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2 Review - Panoramic Photo with Drone

The DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 is one of the best drones for capturing 360-degree panoramic photos.

It has a 20-megapixel camera with a 1-inch CMOS sensor and a mechanical shutter that can shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second.

It comes with a 3-axis gimbal that provides stability during flight and ensures smooth footage.

Specifications of DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0:

  • Camera: 20-megapixel camera with a 1-inch CMOS sensor.
  • Video resolution: 4K at 60 frames per second.
  • Gimbal: 3-axis gimbal.
  • Flight time: Up to 30 minutes.
  • Max speed: 45 mph.
  • Max range: 4.3 miles.
  • Weight: 3.04 pounds.

Pros & Cons of DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0:

Pros:

  • High-quality camera with a large sensor and mechanical shutter.
  • The 3-axis gimbal provides stability during flight.
  • Long flight time and range.
  • Obstacle avoidance sensors for added safety.
  • Advanced flight modes for easier panoramic photography.

Cons:

  • It is expensive compared to other drones.
  • The heavy and bulky design may not be as portable as other options.
  • Limited battery life.

Industry Use Cases of DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0:

If you are a professional photographer or videographer and require high-quality panoramic images for commercial use, then The DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 is an excellent choice.

For example, if you are a real estate agent, this will be a great drone for you to capture an aerial panoramic photo of your properties which you can include in your virtual tour to create a unique perspective.

ii. DJI Mavic Air 2

DJI Mavic Air 2 Review - Panoramic Photo with Drone

The DJI Mavic Air 2 is another great option for capturing 360-degree panoramic images.

It has a 48-megapixel camera with a 1/2-inch CMOS sensor and can shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second.

It also has a 3-axis gimbal for stability during flight and can fly for up to 34 minutes on a single charge.

Specifications of DJI Mavic Air 2:

  • Camera: 48-megapixel camera with a 1/2-inch CMOS sensor.
  • Video resolution: 4K at 60 frames per second.
  • Gimbal: 3-axis gimbal.
  • Flight time: Up to 34 minutes.
  • Max speed: 42.5 mph.
  • Max range: 6.2 miles.
  • Weight: 1.25 pounds.

Pros & Cons of DJI Mavic Air 2:

Pros:

  • High-quality camera with a large sensor.
  • Lightweight and portable design.
  • Long flight time and range.
  • Advanced obstacle avoidance sensors for added safety.
  • Intelligent flight modes for easier panoramic photography.

Cons:

  • Gimbal may not be as stable as other options.
  • Limited camera control compared to more advanced drones.
  • No mechanical shutter.

Industry Use Cases of DJI Mavic Air 2:

If aerial photography is your hobby and you like to capture stunning 360 panoramic images for your personal collection, then The DJI Mavic Air 2 is an excellent option.

It’s easier to operate and has just the right features required for aerial photography.

It’s also a great option for travel bloggers and social media influencers who want to capture aerial panorama photos and videos on the go.

2. Preparing to Capture A 360 Panoramic Image Using Your Drone

Preparing to Capture A 360 Panoramic Image - Panoramic Photo with Drone

Before you are able to capture a proper 360 panorama, you have to consider a few preparations.

i. Configure Your Drone for Panoramic Photography

The first thing to do is to ensure your drone is well-prepared for panoramic photography.

Make sure that the drone’s batteries are fully charged and the propellers are in good condition.

Additionally, you should ensure that the camera is correctly mounted on the drone and is set up for panoramic photography.

Set it up to capture images in RAW format, which will allow you to make adjustments to the exposure and color later during post-processing. Also, enable the manual mode for the camera for consistent exposure.

ii. Observe The Lighting Conditions & Weather Conditions

Lighting is a crucial aspect when capturing any photos. Hence, you need to keep an eye on the weather conditions and observe if the lighting is correct to be able to capture colorful, attractive panoramic images.

Most photographers prefer to conduct their photography session during the golden hour, which is the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset when the light is soft and warm.

You should avoid your aerial photography session during windy conditions to avoid disruptions or at times when the sunlight is too bright to avoid unwanted flares.

iii. Identify A Spot with Fewer Obstructions to Fly Your Drone

You need to keep in mind that your drone will have a few automatic functions that will not allow you to move it to a place with obstructions.

Hence, you need to find a spot where you are sure you can fly and land your drone.

This is where you will navigate your drone to for landing once the photography session is done.

So this spot should be a place with no trees or wires within a 3-meter radius.

If you don’t want to be captured within the photo, then this spot should be a bit away from your main focus location.

iv. Use Flight Planning Software for Efficiency

You can use one of the two apps which is suitable for you:

1. Pix4Dcapture

Pix4Dcapture allows you to design precise flight paths, ensuring consistent and high-quality panoramic photos. It provides valuable data on altitude, speed, and direction, giving you greater control over your drone’s movements.

With Pix4Dcapture, you can automate your drone’s flight, making it easier to capture detailed and accurate panorama images for your virtual tours.

2. AirMap

AirMap provides real-time airspace information and tools to design precise flight paths, ensuring safe and effective panoramic photography. It offers insights into altitude, speed, and no-fly zones, giving you greater control over your drone’s movements.

With AirMap, you can plan your drone’s flight to capture stunning panorama images, making your virtual tours more engaging and professional.

These are flight planning software designed for drones and help you with valuable data such as altitude, drone spend, and direction so that you can have more control over your drone while capturing a photo.

3. Capturing An Amazing 360 Panorama with Your Drone

Capturing Amazing 360 Panorama - Panoramic Photo with Drone

Now that you are ready to start your photo session let’s learn how you can proceed to capture the panoramic image.

i. Identifying the Sweet Spot for Capturing Your Panoramas

Next, it’s time to decide on a location where you want to fly your drone and capture the image.

To find the sweet spot, fly the drone above and around your desired location and find an angle where you find the scene that meets your photogenic requirements.

It’s best you can find a view where your main element gets the highest focus while still capturing a few surrounding elements to add some extra attraction.

Plus, the opposite direction should have something very interesting.

For example, if you are taking a 360 photo of your resort, then your resort should be the center of attention, while you can still have the mountains behind the resorts within the capture on a small scale.

And on the other side, there could be a view of the nearby beach.

Once you find such an angle, mark the spot.

ii. Capture your 360 photo

While the drone is on the spot, let it remain still for a few seconds for the camera focus to fully stabilize.

Once you are happy with the output, capture the image three times.

Check the images after capture and see if this is the view you were looking for.

The drone controller screen should let you get a 360 view of your panorama to understand if it meets your requirements.

If you are satisfied, then there you go. You have just captured 360 panoramas using the best drone for pictures.

iii. Take More Images From Other Angles

As satisfying as it may be, you shouldn’t stop. You should be determined to find the best possible view rather than settling for just one.

Move your drone around again to find more suitable angles and positions and capture a few more aerial panoramic images.

We recommend you capture at least 3 such panoramas before choosing to stop.

iv. Landing Your Drone

If you have flown the drone from a location with no obstacles, then most drones have a single-click option to return to the initial position and land.

But if you move around your drone in too many angles from there, there could be obstacles in the path of the drone from the initial flight position, and then you have to navigate it back to the landing place or to another suitable landing spot manually.

  • Avoid trying to land the drone on your palm. Many find it daring, but it could be risky.
  • If you notice it is windy at the moment around the landing area, then you should move away from that place before attempting to land the drone. You do not want the wind to cause an accident.
  • Make sure there are no birds or other animals around the area you are landing the drone.

v. Post-processing Your Images

Since you captured your images in RAW, you may edit them using Adobe Photoshop and adjust the color balance, brightness, and exposure before exporting them in a suitable image format.

You may then upload it on a VR tool to observe and decide if any more changes are required.

In case you captured this image to create a virtual tour that you want to embed on your WordPress site, then you may use the plugin WPVR. It is right now the no. 1 virtual tour software in WordPress.

You can simply upload your 360 panoramic images in just a few clicks and get a ready virtual tour in less than 5 minutes.

Advantages of Using Drones for Aerial Panorama Photography

Advantages Of Using Drones -  Panoramic Photo with Drone

You have just learned how you can capture a 360-panoramic photo using a drone.

But if you are still having doubts about why this is the best option, let us look at some of the core benefits you will get when using drones.

1. Access to Difficult Locations

You can use drones to capture images from high altitudes, over water bodies, or in areas that are difficult to reach.

With a drone, you can easily capture panoramic images of landscapes, cityscapes, or even inaccessible natural wonders like waterfalls or canyons.

2. High-Quality Images

Drones are equipped with high-quality cameras that can capture high-resolution images.

On top of that, drones with advanced features like 3-axis gimbals and mechanical shutters can ensure that images are stable and free from blur.

3. Time-Saving

Capturing panoramic images manually is a time-consuming process, involving multiple shots taken at different angles and then stitched together in post-processing.

With the best drone for pictures, you can capture panoramic images quickly and efficiently, saving time and effort.

Drones can capture multiple images at different angles in a single flight, making the process of capturing panoramic images faster and more convenient.

4. Unique Perspective

Drones can provide a unique perspective that is not possible with traditional photography techniques.

You can capture panoramic images from high altitudes, providing a bird’s eye view of the environment.

This perspective can provide viewers with a unique and breathtaking view of landscapes and cityscapes.

5. Cost-Effective

Drones are a cost-effective option compared to traditional photography methods.

They can capture high-quality images at a fraction of the cost of traditional aerial photography methods like helicopters or planes.

Top 3 Tools to Create a Virtual Tour with Drone Panoramic Photos

Creating a stunning virtual tour with drone panorama photos requires the right tools. Here are the top three tools that will help you maximize the potential of your panoramic shots:

1. WPVR

WPVR - Panoramic Photo with Drone

WPVR is one of the best tools to create a virtual tour with drone panoramic photos. This WordPress plugin allows you to effortlessly transform your drone panorama shots into immersive virtual tours.

You can also upload high-resolution panoramic images, customize navigation hotspots, and add interactive elements to enhance the viewer experience.

Its user-friendly interface ensures that even beginners can create professional-quality virtual tours quickly. Ideal for real estate, tourism, and other industries, WPVR helps you engagingly showcase properties and locations.

By leveraging the ability of drone panoramic photography, WPVR makes it easy to captivate your audience with stunning virtual tours.

Pricing:

  • Free Plan: free in WordPress Repository.
  • Starter Annual Plan: $79.99 per annual for 1 site.
  • Pro Annual Plan: $169.99 per annual for 10 sites.
  • Agency Annual Plan: $269.99 per annual for unlimited sites.
WPVR Pricing - Panoramic Photo with Drone

2. Koala

Koala - Panoramic Photo with Drone

Koala is a cutting-edge virtual tour software that allows you to create stunning VR experiences using drone-captured footage. You can easily transform aerial photos and videos into immersive virtual tours, providing viewers with a unique and engaging perspective.

This software supports high-resolution imagery and offers intuitive tools for stitching, editing, and customizing your tours. Ideal for real estate, tourism, and event planning, It enhances the presentation of properties and locations, making them more appealing to potential clients.

Its user-friendly interface ensures that even beginners can create professional-quality VR tours, maximizing the impact of your drone photography effortlessly.

Pricing:

  • Basic Annual Plan: free with limited functionality.
  • Pro Annual Plan: $65 per annual for 3 tours.
  • Unlimited Annual Plan: $450 per annual for unlimited tours.
Koala Pricing - Panoramic Photo with Drone

3. My360tours

My 360 Tours - Panoramic Photo with Drone

My360tours is a top tool for creating virtual tours with drone panoramic photos. This platform allows you to turn your high-resolution panoramic images into immersive virtual experiences with ease.

It offers intuitive features for uploading, editing, and customizing your drone panorama shots, making the process straightforward even for beginners.

You can add interactive elements such as hotspots, info points, and navigation tools to enhance viewer engagement. Perfect for real estate, hospitality, and tourism industries, My360tours helps you showcase properties and locations in a captivating way.

By utilizing the capability of drone panoramic photography, My360tours enables you to create professional and engaging virtual tours that leave a lasting impression.

Pricing:

  • Real Estate Annual Plan: $37 per month (billed annually)
  • Dealership Annual Plan: $37 per month (billed annually)
  • Architect Annual Plan: $37 per month (billed annually)
  • Photographer Annual Plan: $49 per month (billed annually)
My 360 Tours - Panoramic Photo with Drone

Conclusion

To summarize, capturing 360 panoramic photos using drones is a revolutionary approach that can significantly enhance your photography capabilities.

Drones offer unique perspectives, high-quality images, and access to challenging locations, making them an ideal choice for real estate, hospitality, and education businesses.

They save you time and effort, provide breathtaking views, and are a cost-effective alternative to traditional methods. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can master aerial panoramic photography and elevate your visual content.

Once you’ve captured these stunning images, you can easily create a virtual tour using the WPVR plugin. WPVR simplifies the process, allowing you to upload and integrate your 360 panoramic images into a virtual tour on your WordPress site in just a few clicks.

** FAQs **

1. What kind of weather conditions should you avoid when flying your drone?

  • When flying your drone, avoid strong winds, heavy rain, and extreme temperatures. These conditions can interfere with the drone’s stability and performance, potentially causing crashes or damage. Instead, opt for calm, clear days with moderate temperatures to ensure the best flying and photography experience.

2. How can you ensure your drone’s battery lasts longer during a photo session?

  • To ensure your drone’s battery lasts longer, fully charge it before your session and bring spare batteries. Avoid aggressive tricks and high-speed flights, as these can drain the battery quickly. Additionally, monitor your battery level regularly and plan your flight path to make efficient use of power. It ensures you have enough battery to safely return and land.

3. What should you do if your drone loses signal while capturing photos?

  • If your drone loses signal, stay calm. Most modern drones have a “Return to Home” feature that automatically brings the drone back to its takeoff point. Ensure this feature is enabled before flying. If the drone doesn’t return automatically, try moving to a higher or clearer location to re-establish the connection.

4. How can you enhance the quality of your drone photos in post-processing?

  • Enhance your drone photos by using editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. Adjust the exposure, contrast, and saturation to make the images pop. Also, fix any distortions or stitching errors in panoramic shots. Shooting in RAW format gives you more flexibility in post-processing. It allows for better adjustments and higher-quality final images.

5. What precautions should you take when flying your drone in populated areas?

  • When flying in populated areas, always follow local regulations and avoid restricted zones. Maintain a safe distance from people, buildings, and vehicles to prevent accidents. Fly at a lower altitude to minimize risks, and always keep your drone within your line of sight. Additionally, inform any nearby individuals of your drone activity to ensure their awareness and cooperation.
Categories
Guide WooCommerce WP VR

How to Use 360 Virtual Shopping Stores to Increase Your WooCommerce Sales [2024]

The ever-growing online e-commerce industries have flourished since the Covid-19 pandemic. Buyers are now more comfortable with online shopping for anything they need and this change in purchasing behavior is still growing.

However, despite all this growth, most online store owners are still only applying the standard methods for converting their potential buyers, such as using WooCommerce funnels or running discount campaigns.

One of the most unique, but appearing ways to increase WooCommerce sales is to use a 360 virtual shopping store.

360 virtual shopping store will help you to increase sales because 71% of consumers said that they would prefer to shop more if the stores used VR technology.

Today, you will learn how you too can use a virtual shopping store to entice more potential buyers and boost your WooCommerce sales.

So let’s begin.

What is a Virtual Shopping store?

A virtual shopping store enhances your online shopping experience by creating an immersive, interactive shopping environment.

As a traditional website, a virtual online store lets you browse products in a 3D space, much like walking through a physical store. You can explore galleries, view products from all angles, and even interact with items for detailed information.

To create a virtual store, you can use advanced technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), offering a more engaging and realistic online shopping experience. This virtual shopping platform enhances your convenience. It also allows you to shop from anywhere at any time.

With a virtual shopping store, you can enjoy the benefits of virtual online shopping, such as personalized recommendations and real-time assistance, making your online shopping experience more enjoyable and efficient.

How Virtual Shopping Stores Help to Increase Your Sales

A VR experience means your visitors will have more control over where they want to move in your store, just like they can when they visit your shop in person.

Help To Increase Your Sales - Virtual Shopping Stores

This flexibility allows your customers to buy in their comfort and helps you gain their trust. It enables you to get loyal repeat customers.

Because once your customers are comfortable shopping with your brand they are less likely to switch to another online store unless they get a better experience. And what better experience than a realistic shopping experience?

Following are a few direct benefits you can enjoy when using a virtual store tour.

1. Enhanced Customer Engagement For E-Commerce

VR will help your customers find the best products from your store without having to look at a long list on the shop page.

They will rather get to look at various items stacked in a virtual environment, just like in your store, click on them to view details, and place orders instantly.

If you can separate products in your store as per categories and then capture the panoramas, then the virtual online store will be even more realistic and help your buyers find products real quickly. They won’t be bored with unnecessary options and eventually place orders as happy customers.

Let’s say it’s the Black Friday season. During this time, the stores are all packed up and it’s a hassle to buy anything due to the jostling of the shoppers.

But a virtual tour will save the customers from all that. They can peacefully move around the shop and get a near-realistic experience of shopping in a busy season.

As a WooCommerce store owner, offering such a VR shopping experience will encourage more buyers to shop from your store compared to others.

2. Not Limited to Product Types or Niches

No matter what WooCommerce showroom or store you own, you will be able to use a virtual shopping store to boost customer engagement.

Although supermarkets, clothing stores, make brands, convenience stores, and other similar stores will get the most benefits from using virtual tours, other businesses can get their fair share of business growth using VR.

For example, a Virtual Car Showroom may not get orders online, but it can certainly help you get inquiries from potential buyers. The same can be said for art galleries which can get a mix of online orders and live visitations.

51% of the customers will be more likely to buy cars if they get a better experience.

This stat indicates that a virtual showroom is a good investment for car dealers.

3. 24/7 Store Availability

Virtual Shopping Stores

Virtual stores are open around the clock. It also allows customers to shop at their convenience. Let’s say a customer forgot to get pancakes when going home. He can place an order through your virtual store and you can deliver it in the morning.

However, a bigger reason why this is an advantage is if you deliver internationally. For example, suppose you write books and you have an online shop where you sell them to people all over the world.

A virtual shopping store of your bookshop will help people from overseas to place orders in their own free time, even if there is a time difference.

The realistic tour will attract international customers more as they will admire the use of advanced technology in your online shop.

4. Never Run Out of Products & Customers

Not all products are always in stock inside a physical store. In some cases, the product warehouse can take too long time to restock the products, making implementing a WMS (Warehouse Management System) a crucial step to increase efficiency.

Therefore, when a customer is shopping at a store and discovers that something is unavailable, they switch to another store quickly.

But in virtual stores, customers know that it takes time to deliver. So, you get plenty of time to stock the products and ship them right to your customer’s doorstep from the warehouse.

Plus, if the weather is not favorable, customers can still shop like they normally do while sitting comfortably at home. When the weather gets better, you can simply go ahead and deliver their products. They won’t have to get ready and go out again to collect these products.

5. Get Visitors Even If They Don’t Have Anything to Buy

If your virtual shopping tour is compatible with VR glasses, then many people will visit it online even if they have nothing to buy.

This will help with branding and often trigger people to order something that may catch their eye while taking a stroll.

Marketing Strategies to Promote Your VR Technology

No Limitations - Virtual Shopping Stores

Let’s say you have used virtual tours on your WooCommerce retail store. But now what?

Did you figure out a marketing strategy to let your customers know about the amazing virtual tour by optimizing your WooCommerce store?

Classic marketing uses traditional methods like newspaper and TV ads, while modern technology demands clever digital strategies.

1. Use Social Media To Promote Your Virtual Shopping Store

Social Media-sponsored ads are one of the most influential ways of digital marketing to promote your virtual store.

When you introduce an exceptional feature like a virtual tour in your online store and put that news on social media, you are bound to get potential customers. Also, social media has algorithms to reach targeted customers.

So when your potential customers are searching for products related to your shop, they’ll stumble upon your virtual store and will be intrigued to shop in a virtual environment.

2. Hire Influencers For Brand Recognition

Influencer marketing is one of the smartest marketing strategies to adopt considering recent trends. They usually have a considerable amount of loyal followers.

So when they promote your virtual reality shopping experience, the followers are certain to take a look at your virtual store.

Also, add Explainer Video in your Virtual Store Tours where you can add a mini video of the influencer promoting your brand or service.

People believe in reviews. And if you get good reviews from a known influencer your brand can benefit from word-of-mouth (WOM) advertising. Which can eventually get you local and international brand recognition.

Create Special Virtual Store Tours for Campaigns

VR tours are itself is a unique marketing strategy that can make your customers intrigued to buy products from you. So why not wisely utilize virtual tours?

Virtual storefronts are displaying particular products on the online store’s landing page or product page to attract potential customers’ attention

In a physical shop, the storefront is a window that displays attractive and exceptional products to draw customers to enter the shop. And this can be utilized in online stores as well.

Virtual stores can utilize Virtual Tours (VR) to create unique storefronts.

Here’s how,

1. Update Virtual Tours on Your Website During Holiday Seasons

During the Holiday season, you can add virtual tours of your store decorated with holiday festivities and decorations.

You can add virtual tours specifically to showcase seasonal products according to the product types and prices.

So when your customer clicks on a product, an on-click product description along with a cart button will appear for them to purchase directly within the virtual tour.

This will let your customers know that your WooCommerce store is holiday-ready and all products are in stock. So they get to feel the holiday vibe even when they’re shopping virtually with a virtual tour.

2. Add Virtual Tours of Discounted Products

Virtual tours open up the possibilities for all kinds of creativity. When you are arranging sales or discounts, you can organize the discounted items and take 360-degree panoramic photos of them to create a virtual tour.

This will make your customers will be intrigued to buy the discounted products within the virtual tour.

You will also be able to add different scenes to your virtual tour under different offer categories. These ideas will also work well with best sellers, new products, and many more.

Suitable Tool to Create A Virtual Store in WordPress

WPVR - Virtual Shopping Stores

One of the best tools for creating Virtual Shopping Stores is WPVR. For your WooCommerce store, it will let your customer purchase a product directly from the virtual store.

The plugin will help you create virtual stores with exceptional features like Hotspots, Explainer Videos, Brand Marketing Information, Virtual Tour Background Music, and many other features.

With the WooCommerce Addon of WPVR, your customers will be able to purchase a product directly from the virtual shopping store.

Examples of 360 Virtual Shopping Stores

To give you a better understanding, here are some examples of 360 virtual shopping stores:

CFS Furniture:

CFS Furnitures - Example of Virtual Shopping Stores

The CFS virtual shopping store enhances customer experience by offering a convenient and accessible way to shop from home, available 24/7.

It features a 3D virtual showroom, allowing customers to explore products interactively. Detailed product information and customer reviews help in making informed decisions. Personalized support via chat ensures assistance is readily available.

Additionally, the store allows for easy comparison of products and access to exclusive online promotions and discounts. It provides an easy and efficient shopping experience

The White Room:

The White Room - Example of Virtual Shopping Stores

The White Room offers virtual bridal consultations for a personalized shopping experience from home. Customers can schedule one-on-one video appointments with bridal consultants. It allows them to explore and discuss their preferred wedding dresses and accessories.

This service provides expert guidance and helps brides find their perfect gown remotely. It also ensures a comprehensive and supportive shopping experience.

It helps to select the best product displayed and customize it according to the customer’s design in consultation. Customer can discuss further after seeing their showcase with a virtual shopping store.

Ritika Shoes:

Ritika Shoes - Example of Virtual Shopping Stores

Ritika Shoes offers a virtual store experience that allows customers to explore and purchase their latest collections from the comfort of their homes.

This virtual showroom provides an immersive 360-degree tour. It also enables users to view shoes in detail and get a realistic feel for the products.

Customers can navigate through the store, examine different styles, and make purchases just as they would in a physical store, but without the need to travel.

The virtual store leverages advanced technology to create an interactive and real shopping environment. This setup is designed to enhance the customer experience, making it easier to browse, compare, and select the perfect pair of shoes.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the secret to creating a successful business is ensuring your customers leave happy and satisfied. A virtual shopping store can transform your customers’ buying journey, making it smooth, engaging, and memorable.

By providing an immersive and realistic experience, a virtual store helps customers feel more connected to your products, increasing their probability of returning to shop again.

Moreover, this unique shopping experience sets your store apart from the competition, giving customers a reason to choose you over others. It’s a perfect way to enhance customer loyalty and boost your online sales via WooCommerce.

So, go ahead and launch your virtual shopping store now with WPVR. Start giving your customers an exceptional shopping experience and boost your WooCommerce sales.

** FAQs **

How does a virtual shopping store improve my customers’ experience?

A virtual shopping store offers an immersive, realistic shopping experience, making it easy for customers to navigate and find products. This enjoyable and engaging journey encourages them to return.

Can I use a virtual shopping store for any type of product?

Yes, whether you run a supermarket, clothing store, or even a car showroom, a virtual shopping store can enhance customer engagement and boost sales across various niches.

How do I promote my virtual shopping store effectively?

To promote your virtual store, use social media ads and collaborate with influencers. This will help you reach your target audience and showcase the unique virtual shopping experience you offer.

Will a virtual shopping store help increase international sales?

Yes, virtual shopping stores are available 24/7. It even allows international customers to shop at their convenience. As a result, this flexibility can attract global buyers and increase your sales.

Is it complicated to set up a virtual shopping store?

Not at all, with tools like WPVR, setting up a virtual shopping store on WordPress is straightforward. Additionally, these tools offer features like hotspots and explainer videos to enhance your store effortlessly.

Categories
Real Estate Virtual Reality WP VR

10 Special Benefits of Virtual Tours for Real Estate [2025]

It’s really difficult for realtors to sell property online as there is a lot of competition who are doing the same things. You need to grab the attention of your potential customers on your side.

So, If you want to catch the attention of potential buyers instantly you can try a virtual tour of your real estate industry.

As listings with virtual tours get 87% more views than those without, and 54% of buyers ignore ads for homes without virtual tours.

These tours offer detailed, realistic views, prompting further exploration and igniting curiosity about your property. Stand out from the competition and simplify your sales process with this cutting-edge technology.

Stay tuned as I am going to explain the benefits of virtual tours, providing actionable insights to supercharge your real estate business and drive exceptional success.

So let’s get started,

What is A Virtual Tour for Real Estate?

A virtual tour for real estate is a Virtual Reality (VR) environment where your clients can have a life-like experience of your property, from anywhere in the world.

This means that through a virtual tour, you will be able to allow your potential clients to visit a property and experience the surroundings while sitting comfortably at home.

Here’s an example of a virtual tour:

Normally, it’s difficult to close a sale without a live visit, and even with a virtual tour, a live visit will still be required. But the difference is, after taking a virtual tour, the buyer will have already made a partial decision on the house and will just want to visit for a final confirmation before negotiating the price.

Apart from that, if you do some research, you will see that people nowadays are looking for easier ways to interact. A virtual tour allows you to create such engagements quite easily also virtual assistants play a crucial role in the real estate industry for making people’s journey easy.

Let us look at the amazing benefits of using property virtual tours in the real estate industry that will let you stay ahead of the competition.

10 Special Benefits of Virtual Tours for Real Estate

Virtual Tour in real estate is the latest trend that you can use to bring more visits to your properties. Let us look at the benefits you can get if you use real estate virtual tours on your websites:

1. Instant Engagement from Potential Buyers

The common practice of most realtors when listing houses is to use a lot of images of the house to try and attract potential buyers.

However, using normal images won’t be enough to connect with buyers. Even if you include a lot of high-quality images, a buyer will still have doubts regarding how the house is structured and constructed in the neighborhood.

According to Barbara Corcoran, the founder of The Corcoran Group, NY, “Buyers decide in the first eight seconds of seeing a home if they’re interested in buying it.”

Even though Barbara is talking about a live visit, what if you could get the same output online?

That’s exactly what a virtual tour can help you achieve. A well-crafted virtual tour for real estate will give the buyers a more realistic idea about the house. This will help hook the visitor immediately, and keep them exploring for the next 2-5 minutes!

Instant Engagement from Potential Buyers - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

A proper virtual tour will highlight all the rooms and spaces in the house. Visitors will be able to navigate on their own and move from one room to another, go to all the floors, and check out every detail of the house.

Plus, you will be able to include additional information in the tour as tooltips or on-click content. For example, you could add details on the history of the house and its flooring, wall decorations, etc.

This can be a great way to highlight the property and make it stand out among its listing on other sites.

Whether it is for a residential property or commercial property, real estate virtual tours will let you offer an engaging experience to potential buyers and get them more attracted to the property.

2. Increase Closing Rate

Increase Closing Rate - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

Till now, your website was like any other real estate website, and you did the same hard work that every other realtor does.

  • You probably get regular calls from people to know more about certain properties and set appointments to visit them.

The people who called you are probably interested in your property. But do keep in mind they don’t have a realistic idea of the structure of the property. They are only mildly interested based on the images you provided.

There is a possibility that after visiting, the prospect will not find the property suitable or attractive.

But you will still be investing your valuable time in giving the tour and pitching your offer. Thus, there are tons of cases where people reject your offer as the house didn’t seem like what they wanted.

With virtual tours for real estate on your site, the clients who contact you already have a great idea about the property and are well aware of how it is organized and structured.

Chances are high that after they visit, if the house matches what they saw on the tour, they will make a positive decision or go for negotiations immediately.

As a result, you won’t have to waste hours giving property tours to mildly interested prospects and trying to convince them to buy.

Create amazing virtual tours with WPVR - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

After someone finds a property attractive, it’s always best to make it easier for buyers to find itd location for research. In this case, you may include a Google Map location for the property using the Gmapswidget. This plugin will allow you to include unlimited mobile-responsive maps on your site in minutes with extensive customization and Google Street View support.

3. Cost-effective And Easy to Create

People believe that virtual tours for real estate agents cost a lot of money and take more time and effort to create. This is why most realtors who know about the advantages of virtual tours are not using them actively.

However, if you own a real estate WordPress site, then it is entirely a different case. WordPress has an exclusive plugin called WPVR which will help you create a virtual tour of real estate without any hassle. (I will give you more details about this plugin at the end of this post.)

 Cost-effective and Easy to Create - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

You do not need to hire an expensive production house or camera crews.

If you use WPVR, you can simply take 360 panorama images from the center of every room of the house, and upload these images in the plugin. WPVR will turn these images into a 360 virtual environment.

You will be able to link the scenes between each other to make them into proper virtual tours.

The plugin will cost less than $7 a month. The only initial expense you will need is to buy a 360 camera (although many often use their iPhones to capture the panoramas.)

4. People Will Find You More Reliable

Through real estate virtual tours, buyers will not need to visit several properties before finding a suitable one. They can simply explore the houses by taking virtual tours.

Easy Tour and More Reliable - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

The realistic experience will make them feel like they are actually taking a tour of the property and help develop a genuine interest in properties.

So, buyers will only decide to visit places that they feel are properly built and organized according to their requirements.

Thus people will find your listings more reliable than others.

5. Help to Generate Potential Leads

Often, people aren’t ready to make a decision even if they find a house that suits them. It can either be the case that they are exploring other neighborhoods or have different budgets. Many also explore without a buying intention just to explore houses to buy a month or two later.

In these cases, it’s best if you can collect their contact information. It’s clear that they won’t make an instant decision. So you may use email marketing to nurture them and convince them to buy this property or a different property with similar features in the near future. You can make the most of online leads by comparing Omnisend and Klaviyo for effective email marketing across industries.

However, in the WordPress sector, there’s a very easy-to-use tool Mail Mint for realtors that you can use for effective email marketing.

The latest virtual tour software allows you to place a contact form or a booking form right on the virtual tour. If a person is not sure if he is ready to purchase or not, he may contact you or book a call with you to get rid of his doubts.

6. Save Time & Find Your Dream Home Faster

Virtual tours of real estate offer numerous benefits, revolutionizing the house-hunting process. By leveraging VR real estate tours, prospective can explore properties remotely, saving time and simplifying the search for their dream home.

These virtual tours provide an immersive experience. It allows viewers to virtually walk through properties and inspect details without physically visiting each house.

With virtual home tours, buyers can easily narrow down their options. They can also eliminate properties that don’t meet their criteria, and focus on those that do. This enhanced efficiency makes finding the perfect home faster and more convenient.

Additionally, real estate video tours enable buyers to revisit properties multiple times from the comfort of their own homes.

7. Effortless Exploration: No Technical Skills Required

Effortless exploration in virtual tours of real estate means that you can navigate through properties easily without needing any technical skills.

With VR real estate tours or virtual house tours, you can simply click, swipe, or use intuitive controls to move around and explore the space. There’s no need for specialized knowledge or training to enjoy the benefits of virtual tours in real estate.

These virtual tour experiences are designed to be user-friendly. It ensures that anyone, regardless of technical proficiency, can easily navigate through properties and examine different rooms, features, and details.

By eliminating the barrier of technical skills, virtual tours make it accessible for a wider audience to explore properties remotely.

Thus, effortless exploration in virtual tours of real estate maximizes convenience and accessibility, regardless of your level of technical expertise.

8. View Homes Anytime, Anywhere

Virtual home tours redefine the house-hunting experience by offering the flexibility to view homes anytime, anywhere.

prospective buyers can explore properties without being limited by time or location. These virtual home tours provide the convenience of touring houses online. Whether it’s during a lunch break, in the evening after work, or even from the comfort of your own couch.

The benefits of virtual tours in real estate extend beyond convenience. Whether it’s through a computer, tablet, or smartphone, virtual home tours enable you to view properties at your own pace without the need to coordinate with agents or schedule in-person visits.

By offering the flexibility to view homes anytime, anywhere, virtual home tours revolutionize the way people search for their dream properties, making the process more accessible, convenient, and efficient.

Whether it’s exploring virtual house tours during a busy day or leisurely browsing through properties in the evening, virtual home tours cater to the diverse needs and schedules of modern homebuyers.

9. Realistic Experience: Feel Like You’re Really There

Realistic Experience - Benefits of Virtual Tours

Virtual tours of real estate offer a realistic experience that makes you feel like you’re really there. With VR real estate tours or real estate video tours, you can immerse yourself in virtual environments that closely resemble physical properties.

These tours provide a lifelike exploration of homes. It enables individuals to navigate through rooms, inspect details, and get a sense of the space’s ambiance.

You can experience properties as if you were walking through them in person. It also enhances your understanding and connection to the homes.

This realistic experience is made possible by advanced technologies that simulate real-world environments with accuracy and detail.

By offering such immersive experiences, virtual home tours revolutionize the way people explore properties. It provides a level of engagement and insight that traditional listings cannot match.

In essence, virtual tours of real estate blur the lines between physical and virtual experiences as it create a dynamic and captivating way to discover your dream home.

10. Higher Website Traffic & Visibility on Social Media

To increase website traffic and enhance visibility on social media, incorporating virtual tours of real estate can be highly effective. By leveraging real estate tours on your website and social media channels, you can offer engaging content that attracts and retains visitors.

Virtual tours provide a unique and immersive experience. It entices you to spend more time on your website or social media profiles, thus boosting traffic and engagement metrics.

Furthermore, sharing virtual home tours on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube can increase your brand’s visibility and reach a wider audience.

These platforms prioritize visually appealing and interactive content. It helps to make virtual tours an ideal format for capturing attention and generating interest in your real estate listings.

Additional Benefit: Great Tool To Attract More Visitors

Besides being a great tool to convert potential buyers, virtual tours are also quite attractive in general.

If you have a great virtual tour created on your website, you may share it on social media for others to explore. This will help to get. a lot of traffic and among these visitors, you may end up getting potential buyers.

However, we recommend you only do this when you are selling a luxury home or a commercial property where the profit margins are higher. Doing it for ordinary listings will increase your hosting cost with higher traffic and reduce your ROI.

Tips:
Once you place a virtual tour on your site, you also need to work on getting traffic to your site and make the experience seamless. In this case, you can optimize your site for speed and SEO along with the right listing plugin and a suitable real estate theme. These along with your virtual tours will help captivate potential buyers effectively.

As you can see, adding virtual tours to your strategy will get you more business in the long run. Now, let us look into the WordPress plugin we talked about earlier.

The Best Affordable Tool to Create Virtual Tours in WordPress

If you run a real estate listing site via WordPress, you already have great benefits thanks to all the available plugins to achieve almost anything. And it’s no different with virtual tours.

WPVR right now is the best virtual tour creator in WordPress which lets you create stunning virtual tours easily, on your own, without spending a fortune.

WPVR – The #1 WordPress Virtual Tour Creator

WP VR – Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

WPVR lets you create amazing virtual tours without any technical coding skills.

You simply need to provide the plugin with a 360-degree panoramic image, and this plugin will turn that image into a real-life experience.

You can provide images of all the rooms of the house, and then link them to go back and forth from one another. And if you use high-quality images, it will be almost like a real house tour.

Using a good real estate photo editing tool could come in handy to maintain high quality.

A person experiencing a virtual tour will be able to look around, zoom in and out where required, and navigate on his/her own.

However, that’s not all. WPVR comes with several features to make your virtual tour more engaging.

1. Show Additional Information About Your Property

The plugin will let you place tooltips and on-click content to provide additional and interesting information about the property.

You can set images, videos, headings, GIFs, and even a combination of these content to tell them more about the property.

You can also set details with a button and let your viewers take action (like dropping their contact information).

Here are a couple of examples:

WPVR on-click content image - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate
On-click content on virtual tours - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

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2. Explainer Video To Introduce Yourself And Greet Your Visitors

Another useful feature of WPVR is the explainer video.

You can record an introductory video and embed it in the tour as a mini video so that whenever a person is ready to visit, they get a warm welcome from you.

Explainer Video in real estate virtual tours - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

You can also arrange it as a guide to properly experience the entire property with instructions on what they should be excited about and the best features of the house.

This will make the experience even more life-like and create a good impression about your services.

3. Interactive Floor Map of Your Property

You may also include a floor map of your property so that the visitor can get a birds-eye view of the architecture of the property and understand their location in the property when moving between multiple scenes.

Use Interactive Floor plans in virtual tours - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

Apart from these, you will get several other useful features which include:

  • Company information embedding
  • Embedded lead form or contact form
  • Custom navigation controls
  • Background music
  • Virtual tour scene gallery
  • and many more.

The plugin is easy to use and has detailed tutorials. You do not need to learn any sort of coding and you do not have to be an expert to use the plugin.

On top of that, you will be able to embed your real estate virtual tours anywhere on your website using shortcodes or a block/widget in your page builder.

WPVR Pricing

WPVR Pricing - Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

As I have mentioned earlier, WPVR is super cost-effective compared to the value you can get by using virtual tours. The plugin has the following pricing plans:

  • Free Plan: WPVR Free on WordPress repo
  • Starter Annual Plan: 7$9.99 Starter – $6.67 per month (billed annually)
  • Pro Annual Plan: $169.99$14.17 per month (billed annually)
  • Agency Annual Plan: $269.99- $22.5 per month (billed annually)
  • Starter Lifetime Plan: $249.99 (one-time fee)
  • Pro Lifetime Plan: $449.99 per month (one-time fee)
  • Agency Lifetime Plan: $649.99 per month (one-time fee)

As you can see, you may try out its free version to experience the basic features before choosing to upgrade to premium.

Conclusion

In conclusion, virtual tours can transform your real estate experience. It offers flexibility and convenience. It also allows you to explore properties at your own pace from anywhere.

Virtual tours eliminate the hassle of traditional house-hunting, saving you time and effort by providing immersive experiences that bring homes to life.

Whether you’re a buyer looking for your dream home or a seller wanting to showcase your property, virtual tours offer detailed and realistic views. It helps you make informed decisions or attract qualified leads.

Welcome the future of real estate with virtual tours, where convenience and efficiency enhance your property exploration. So create your virtual tour now with WPVR.

** FAQs **

Is it expensive to create virtual tours for real estate properties?

  • No, virtual tours can be cost-effective, especially with tools like WPVR. Requires minimal investment in equipment and software. It offers significant returns on investment through enhanced property marketing.

Can virtual tours be customized to match branding?

  • Yes, virtual tours support branding customization. Add logos, company information, and colors for a consistent brand identity. It helps to enhance professionalism and brand recognition in the real estate market.

Are virtual tours compatible with mobile devices?

  • Virtual tours are optimized for mobile viewing. It ensures easy accessibility and engagement across devices if you use a perfect tool. You can reach a wider audience of potential buyers on smartphones and tablets.

Do virtual tours increase website engagement?

  • Yes, virtual tours significantly enhance website engagement. Visitors spend more time exploring properties through immersive tours. It leads to higher conversion rates and property inquiries.

Can virtual tours be embedded on external websites?

  • Yes, virtual tours can be easily embedded on external websites. Extend property visibility and reach by sharing tours on partner platforms. It helps to maximize exposure and generate more leads through the strategic placement of virtual tours.
Categories
Guide WooCommerce WP VR

Turn Your WooCommerce Site into An Online Virtual Store [2024]

Nowadays people are more comfortable buying from home than visiting a store directly. But, just like some products sell more online, there are products that people prefer buying in person.

For example, suppose you are selling products such as home decor, electronics, kitchen appliances, etc. In that case, your buyers may not wish to purchase them online based on mere images and descriptions, even if you have a well-organized WooCommerce store.

What if you could combine them both? What if you could create an online store, where people can get a similar experience that they would get on a live visit, while still being able to order products? Guess what, it’s possible. Simply create an online virtual store.

An Online Virtual Store will help you make the shopping experience more realistic for your buyers by letting them tour your shop and, view and order products right from within the virtual store.

Today, you will learn how you can turn your WooCommerce store into a 360 virtual store, and why you should use it actively.

So let’s begin.

What is an Online Virtual Store?

An online virtual store is a digital shopping experience that simulates a physical retail environment. Customers can virtually tour the store, view products in a realistic setting, and make purchases directly within the virtual space.

This immersive approach combines the convenience of online shopping with the interactive experience of an in-person visit.

you can enhance your online presence, attract customers seeking virtual shopping experiences, and drive sales in a dynamic virtual environment.

Why Online Virtual Stores Are Valuable

Why Online Virtual Store Tours Are Valuable to The Customers

Two out of every three people recognize and enjoy virtual tours. And if you can use virtual tours in the right way, then your WooCommerce sales may significantly go up.

Following are some of the reasons why you and your buyers will love using an online virtual store:

  • Save a Generous Amount Of Time: With virtual store tours, customers can browse your products from anywhere, saving them the time and hassle of traveling to a physical store.
  • Never Run Out of Supplies: Virtual store tours ensure that customers always have access to your products, regardless of physical inventory levels, reducing the risk of stockouts.
  • Make Holiday Sales Easier: During busy holiday seasons, virtual store tours provide a convenient and stress-free shopping experience. It helps to accommodate increased demand and ensure customers find what they need.
  • Enhance Virtual Shopping Experience: Virtual store tours offer an immersive and interactive shopping experience. It allows customers to explore products in a realistic virtual environment.
  • Increase Reach and Accessibility: By offering virtual store tours, you can reach a broader audience of customers who may not have easy access to physical stores, expanding your market reach.
  • Easy Online Shopping: Virtual store tours simplify the online shopping process by providing a visual and interactive platform for customers to browse and purchase products seamlessly.

Now let’s see online virtual tours from a different perspective in the next section.

How Different Businesses Can Utilize Online Virtual Store Tours

Virtual Tours in WooCommerce Sites include the products that a buyer can purchase directly from the store. Your customers can explore your virtual store, and easily add any product they like into their carts from within the tour.

And then, once they are ready, they can simply visit the checkout page and complete the purchase in just a few seconds.

So, when you allow your customers to shop in a virtual store, you’re allowing them to shop from the comfort of their home – thus increasing the possibility to sell more.

How Different Businesses Can Utilize An Online Virtual Store

Let’s take a closer look at a few businesses where virtual store tours have a lot of potential.

Virtual Retail & Wholesale Stores

Virtual Store Tours can be a must-have method for both retail and wholesale businesses.

Rather than showing a few products in a small shop, you can create a whole virtual store with a larger space where you can show all your products in a broader view.

Virtual Store Tour will let your customers shop without any inconvenience and give them a personalized purchasing experience.

As a retailer, you can expect people to order from you more frequently, and then handling the delivery is quite easy since you can deliver directly from your warehouse.

Virtual Book Stores

Buying new books has always been quite difficult from a physical store. You can not always realize what type of books you want or what books are available.

A virtual bookstore may solve this problem. Simply create separate views for separate genres. It allows your buyers to move to the area with their desired genres in a few clicks.

Plus, the added control in your tour will allow you to view some unique descriptions of the book by hovering over it. Then you can allow clicking to view and order it.

Books can satisfy the heart’s hunger. But it’s not always possible to go to a store, check different genres, and find a suitable book. This is a great way to represent your WooCommerce store when selling books.

Virtual Fashion & Lifestyle Stores

Fashion and Lifestyle stores usually contain makeup, clothing, and other fashion accessories. And a virtual store may be the most effective for businesses in these industries.

Famous brands like Ralph Lauren and Sephora are already utilizing virtual tours to showcase their available products.

Just imagine how amazed and delighted your customers will be when they get an immersive experience while shopping for their luxury comfort item through a virtual tour on a WooCommerce website.

So if you are selling clothing products or luxury items, then you should definitely consider preparing an online virtual store for your business.

How to Create an Online Virtual Store: Step-By-Step Guide

There are several no-code app builder tools to create Virtual Tours. But you can easily create a virtual virtual virtual tour with the WPVR tool.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to how to create a virtual store tour for your WooCommerce Site. So let’s get started.

1. Install & Activate WPVR Plugin

At first, you’ll need to install the free version of the WPVR Plugin. For this,

  • Go to your WordPress Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New
  • Search for WPVR and the plugin will come up in the search results
  • Install and activate the plugin.

Now you’ll need to upgrade to the pro version of the plugin to get the WooCommerce Addon.

Once you’ve upgraded and activated your license, install WooCommerce following the same steps as before and activate it.

2. Get the most out of your WPVR Plugin

Following the installation and activation of the plugin, a WPVR section will appear. Go to the WPVR and select General Settings from there.

General Setup Option - WPVR - Online Virtual Store
  • Mobile Menu Resizer: This feature ensures that your virtual tour is compatible with smartphones and that the tour size is adjusted to fit your phone’s screen.
  • Disable WordPress Large Image Handler: By default, WordPress reduces image files. When you enable this option, 360 images will not be compressed when uploaded, preserving the tour’s good quality.
  • Disable On-Hover Content for Mobile: Smartphones do not have the ability to hover, therefore this feature disables the on-hover content for them.
  • Notice to Mobile Users on the Front End: Set customizable notices for your customers when they are experiencing the tour using a smartphone with this feature.
  • VR Glass Support: Use VR Glass to experience virtual tours in a realistic manner.

Then, Hover over WPVR and Select Add New Tour.

Add New Virtual Retail Tour - WPVR - Online Virtual Store

Now, move on and give a title of the tour,

Add 360 virtual store title - WPVR Online Virtual Store

3. Create Your First Scene of 360 Online Virtual Store

you’re in the Scenes Tab now.

  • Provide a Scene ID. Make sure you don’t give any special character or space inside the Scene ID
  • Then click upload to add a 360 panoramic image to your virtual tour.
  • After you’ve uploaded the scene, click on Preview to load the tour on the backend,
Preview The Tour - WPVR Online Virtual Store

You’ll then see a Tour Preview has appeared on the screen.

  • Give a Title that you want to display at the front end.
  • If the Tour Preview seems okay to you, click Publish and your tour will be ready.
Publish The Tour - WPVR Online Virtual Store

And you’re all done creating your first virtual store tour!

4. Advanced Controls

Now, let’s move on to the WPVR Pro controls. The first one is Advanced Controls from the Generals Tab.

WPVR Advanced Controls - Online Virtual Store

Here are some exceptional features you should have in your online Virtual Store other than the usual settings,

  • Gyroscope Control: If you want your customers to shop using smartphones, Gyroscope control is a must-feature for you. This feature helps you to optimize the whole virtual tour for smartphones so that your users can enjoy the tour from wherever they want.
  • Scene Gallery: Your store must have various types of products and aisles in one store. Showcase all the aisles in different scenes. Once you have multiple Scenes in a Virtual tour and enable the advanced Scene Gallery option, your customers will be able to move from one Scene to another in one click via the Scene Gallery. Now your customers will be able to jump from one scene to another from the scene gallery.
  • Add Company Information: Provide brief descriptions of your store brand or company and also add the logo so that your customers know about your online store.

5. Control Buttons

Next, move on to the Control Buttons. Leave the options enabled if you want to have that specific control feature in your virtual tour.

Control Buttons - Online Virtual Store

6. Add WooCommerce Product

Now, it’s time for you to add WooCommerce Products to your virtual store. With WPVR, there’s an option for you to integrate WooCommerce products as hotspots.

Here’s how you can add a new hotspot to your scene.

Let’s see how you can do that,

  • At first, Add a hotspot using the “+” button
  • Provide a hotspot ID.
  • Point to the product that you want to add as a WooCommerce product and some coordinates of that product will appear as Pitch & Yaw. Copy-Paste those coordinates in the dedicated fields.
  • Select the Hotspot-Type as WooCommerce Product.
  • Also, add a customized Hotspot Custom Icon & Color if necessary.
  • Add a product from the product section
  • Add an On Hover Content such as “Buy Now”
  • Preview & if the tour seems okay in the preview then publish it.
WooCommerce Product in WPVR - Online Virtual Store

Note: The Custom Icon & Color won’t appear on the tour preview. Youll only be able to see that from the Frontend

WooCommerce Product -Online Virtual Store

When the customer clicks on it, the product appears and they can add the product to their cart directly.

Add the WooCommerce Product to the Cart - Online Virtual Store

This is how a virtual retail store can be set up on a WooCommerce site. You can now carry on to making your entire store virtual.

Virtual Reality Shopping Platforms

Now, I’m going to explain how you can transform your WooCommerce site into an engaging online virtual store, providing your customers with an immersive and interactive shopping experience. Here are some virtual reality shopping platforms that help you to make a virtual store online.

  • WPVR: Provides easy integration with WordPress websites. It also offers a user-friendly interface for creating virtual stores with customizable environments and product displays.
  • Obsess: Delivers an immersive 360-degree virtual shopping experience, featuring personalized virtual stores that reflect brand identity and interactive product displays for enhanced engagement.
  • ByondXR: Enables the creation of immersive and interactive 3D virtual stores. It provides easy integration with existing e-commerce platforms and offers customizable environments tailored to brand identity.
  • 3D Cloud by Marxent: Revolutionizes the virtual shopping experience with lifelike 3D environments. It also provides real-time synchronization of product data & inventory and intuitive tools for designing personalized virtual stores.
  • V-commerce by Matterport: Integrates Matterport’s 3D technology for virtual shopping environments. It also offers interactive product showcases, detailed product information, and a seamless transition from physical to virtual spaces.
  • Spatial: Offers collaborative virtual shopping experiences for multiple users. It helps to integrate 3D models and augmented reality for product visualization, and provides remote virtual showrooms and product demonstrations.
  • Glimpse Group: Provides innovative virtual reality solutions for immersive shopping experiences. It features advanced visualization tools, interactive product displays, and integration with various e-commerce platforms.
  • Holition: Offers cutting-edge augmented reality and virtual reality technologies for retail. It includes interactive product demonstrations, virtual try-on experiences, and customizable virtual stores tailored to brand requirements.
  • Inspace XR: Specializes in creating virtual showrooms and retail spaces with spatial design features. It integrates virtual reality for immersive product exploration and offers realistic and customizable virtual environments for brand representation.
  • Emperia: It is a virtual reality shopping platform with personalized virtual stores. It helps to integrate with e-commerce platforms for smooth shopping experiences and provides customizable product displays and interactive features for enhanced engagement.

Conclusion

In conclusion, transforming your WooCommerce site into an online virtual store is a strategic move to elevate your brand presence.

By offering a virtual store tour, you provide an engaging and immersive shopping experience that seems to be a live visit, regardless of your store’s size.

This approach enhances the virtual shopping experience, encourages increased purchases, and adds a touch of luxury to your online virtual storefront.

Adopting virtual shopping with WPVR indicates your WooCommerce site and creates a beautiful virtual product showroom.

So, take advantage of virtual store platforms to create organized 360 Virtual Tours, turning your plain WooCommerce site into a dynamic and memorable destination for customers.

** FAQs **

How can I create an online virtual store using WooCommerce?

To create a virtual store with WooCommerce, start by installing plugins like WPVR, which provide tools for building immersive virtual store tours and product showcases directly on your website. These plugins offer intuitive interfaces and step-by-step guides to help you set up your virtual store effortlessly.

What are the advantages of virtual store tours for my WooCommerce site?

Virtual store tours enhance the shopping experience by allowing customers to explore products in a lifelike virtual environment. It boosts engagement and encourages more purchases. They also differentiate your WooCommerce site, making it more memorable and appealing to visitors, ultimately increasing sales and brand recognition.

Can I personalize virtual store tours for my WooCommerce products?

Yes, virtual store tours can be customized to showcase your unique WooCommerce products. It enables you to highlight special features, promotions, and discounts. You can easily create tailored virtual experiences that resonate with your target audience and drive conversions.

How do virtual store tours improve the virtual shopping experience on my WooCommerce site?

Virtual store tours provide a more interactive and engaging shopping experience, increasing customer satisfaction and trust in your brand. By offering a realistic preview of your products, virtual tours help reduce uncertainty and hesitation, leading to higher conversion rates and repeat purchases.

Are virtual store tours compatible with mobile devices for my WooCommerce site?

Yes, virtual store tours created with plugins are fully responsive and compatible with mobile devices. It ensures that customers can enjoy an easy shopping experience across all platforms. This accessibility allows you to reach a broader audience and maximize the impact of your virtual store on your WooCommerce site.

Categories
Plugins Real Estate

8 Best Virtual Tour Software For Real Estate Agencies In 2024

Virtual tours are transforming real estate sales, and here’s why you should be paying attention.

According to a recent survey, almost 50% of potential buyers would consider making an offer on a home solely after viewing a virtual tour.

Hence, it’s logical to start using virtual tours actively if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

But, to create engaging and enjoyable virtual house tours, you need the right tool that is easy to use and packed with features.

Today, I’ll discuss some of the best virtual tour software for real estate agencies, including 360 virtual tour software, real estate video tours, and 3D real estate walkthroughs, to help you start selling more properties.

So let’s begin.

Key Features in Virtual Tour Software for Real Estate

When considering virtual tour software for real estate, there are several key features that you must have to make sure you can create a virtual tour that is appealing to your potential buyers.

Here are the features to look for in the best virtual tour software for creating engaging 360 virtual tours, 3D real estate walkthroughs, and real estate video tours:

  1. Easy UI to help create virtual tours quickly: A user-friendly interface is essential for creating virtual tours efficiently. It saves you valuable time.
  2. Ability to support high-quality media: High-resolution images and videos are important for an impressive virtual tour experience. Ensuring your media is clear and detailed helps present properties in the best possible light.
  3. Quality Mobile Responsiveness: Easy mobile compatibility is a must, as many buyers view tours on their phones. The software should deliver a flawless experience across all devices.
  4. Engaging Interactive Hotspots: Interactive hotspots enhance the virtual tour by providing additional information and engaging features. This includes tooltips, click-to-view videos, and on-hover content. It makes tours more interactive and informative.
  5. Customizable Branding: Your branding should be prominently displayed within the virtual tours through watermarks and logos. This ensures buyers can easily recognize your work.
  6. Contact Form To Reach Out To You: Integrating a contact form within the virtual tour can significantly boost lead generation. This feature allows potential buyers to easily reach out.

Other than these, the more features you get to make the tour more attractive, the better. For example, having a scene gallery, interactive floor map, navigation icons, background music, etc., is great to make the tour more enjoyable.

You will even find tools that have support for VR glasses & custom introductory videos, which can be great for attracting high-value buyers.

8 Best Real Estate Virtual Tour Software in 2024

Now, I am going to describe five of the top virtual tour software for your real estate agency solutions that are revolutionizing the way your present properties are for potential buyers.

1. WP VR – Best Real Estate Virtual Tour Builder for WordPress

WPVR - best virtual tour software for real estate

WPVR is the leading virtual tour creator in WordPress. It has the most simplistic UI that will let you create virtual tours within a few minutes without having any prior knowledge.

All you need to do is upload 360 panoramic images of the property you’re selling, and the tool will help you transform each image into a realistic virtual tour.

It comes with both a free and a pro version. The pricing of this tool is very reasonable, and the best part is you can embed this software even in non-WordPress websites.

This tool comes with everything you need, such as interactive hotspots, branding media placements in the tour, floor plans, scene gallery, etc., to make the virtual tours super engaging.

If you’re looking for a very reasonable way of boosting your real estate sales, WP VR will be one of the best options for you.

Key Features of WPVR

  • Connect multiple scenes to craft a realistic tour
  • Interactive hotspots to offer information and create engagement
  • Scene Gallery to showcase all the rooms and features
  • Custom navigation icons for easy control
  • Gyroscope support for mobile devices
  • Fluent Forms integration to add contact forms or book forms
  • Company branding info customization
  • Embedded virtual floor plans
  • VR Glass Support [Google Cardboard]
  • Introductory Explainer video
  • 360 Video tour creation
  • Google Streetview tour creation
  • WooCommerce integration for virtual showrooms
  • Option to embed a tour on external websites.

Pricing:

  • Free: Available on WordPress Repository with the option to create unlimited tours with limited features.
  • Pro: Starting from $79.99[Annual] to Agency plans $649.99[Lifetime]
WPVR Pricing - Best virtual tour software for real estate

2. Kuula Virtual Tour Creator

Kuula - Best virtual tour software for real estate

Kuula is another brilliant real estate virtual tour creator that comes with a simplistic UI. The real estate virtual tour software is aimed at smaller but top real estate agents who may require minimal features to create an engaging 360 virtual tour.

Apart from generating a 360 virtual environment from a panoramic image, Kuula allows additional customizations such as pan/tilt zoom, focus customization, manual distance adjustments, and a horizon line feature.

You’ll also find options like manual and automatic focus, image stabilization, image panning, seamless image integration, etc., which can be handy if you are capturing the panoramas on your own.

Key Features of Kuula

  • Subscription-based platform to host virtual tours
  • Equirectangular virtual tour
  • Image retouching and restoration
  • Embedding and sharing virtual tours on any website
  • Company branding info customization
  • SSL-certified link generation
  • Interactive hotspots
  • Custom hotspot icons
  • Private tour link generation
  • Password protected tours

Pricing:

  • Free: Available on their website with limited feature usage.
  • Pro: Starting from $240[Annually] to Agency plans $432[Annually]
Kuula Pricing - Best virtual tour software for real estate

3. Matterport – 3D Virtual Tour Service

Matterport - Best virtual tour software for real estate

Matterport is the most iconic and popular virtual tour software for realtors that has been around for a while.

Unlike most other VR tools, Matterport focuses on helping you craft the most realistic virtual tours out there. The best feature that sets Matterport apart is the 3D walk feature. When you move from one spot to another in the virtual tour, you feel like you are walking toward it.

Having said that, there are complications involved.

First, you have to use their camera, the Matterport Pro2 and use it to capture 360 images. Then you have to use their platform software to customize and host it in your Matterport account. From there, you will find the embed link to place it on your website.

However, they did offer a mobile app as an alternative, which though great, isn’t of much high quality.

With these comes the expense. Matterport is one of the most expensive virtual tour services out there.

If you have a high budget and are selling luxury homes, then this could be a great option. But for local listings, this could be a bit overboard and will probably result in a lower ROI.

Key Features:

  • Pro2 Camera offers high-quality image capture.
  • Easy platform to edit the tour
  • Tags to highlight text and media inside the tour.
  • Professional dollhouse tour service
  • Custom blurring and animation within the tour
  • Publishable to streetview
  • Display dimensions inside the tours

Pricing:

  • Free: You can use the free version with limited features with NO option to embed the tour on your website.
  • Pro: Starting from $119.88 [ Starter Annually] to $3228 [Business annually]
Matterport Pricing - Best virtual tour software for real estate

4. 3D Vista

3D vista - Best virtual tour software for real estate

3D Vista is a downloadable software that comes with options to generate VR tours from Google Streetview or create virtual tours using 360 panoramic images.

But unlike other virtual tour software, you do not need a ready 360 image.

You can simply capture images in the right angles and then stitch them in a 360 panoramic image within 3D Vista. And then, you may turn that into a 360 virtual tour.

If you know how to handle cameras and tripods, then this is a great tool for you. Basically, 3D Vista acts as a DIY virtual tour creator.

Key Features:

  • Easy live panorama creation
  • Batch Image uploading
  • 360 Image stitching and sound editing support
  • Live tour with video call support
  • Offline download option
  • 3D Transition Effect
  • Custom Hotspots
  • Floor Plan for real estate
  • Timelapse videos of the same spot with a 360-degree view
  • Icon Library to add inside the virtual tour
  • Customizable Branding

Pricing:

  • Free: This software doesn’t have an option to use for free. But you can use the trial version to learn its features.
  • Pro: The one-time payment is $499 and you get 1 year of free software upgrades.
3D Vista Pricing - Best virtual tour software for real estate

5. Klapty

Klapty - Best virtual tour software for real estate

Klapty is a drag-and-drop virtual tour creator that lets you add 360-degree images with interactive hotspots.

You don’t need to become a tech expert to use Klapty. Realtors can easily use this tool to showcase a property. Instead of just using boring pictures on your website, you can make an exciting tour that lets people feel as if they’re walking around your place.

The free version of Kalpty lacks customization options. Klapty is made with Real Estate in focus, and considering it’s a free choice, it’s quite good.

Let’s find out its key features,

Key Features:

  • Clickable Floor plans in Virtual Tour
  • Customizable hotspots to show specific features or move between scenes
  • Create and share virtual tours
  • Embed virtual tours on your website
  • Post virtual tours on social media
  • Blurring Tool
  • VR Headset compatibility
  • Password protection for private virtual tours
  • Nadir logo enable/disable
  • 2D photo gallery

Pricing:

  • Free: You can use a 15-day free trial for Klapty
  • Pro: Starting from $108.8[Annually] to $478.8[Annually]
Klapty Pricing - Best virtual tour software for real estate

6. EyeSpy360

Eyespy360 - Best virtual tour software for real estate

EyeSpy360 offers the perfect blend of simplicity and efficiency for creating stunning real estate virtual tours. As a busy professional, you need a tool that simplifies the process, and EyeSpy360’s easy-to-use interface helps you create tours quickly without any hassle.

Supporting high-quality media ensures your images and videos are crystal clear. It presents properties in the best possible light.

With today’s buyers often using mobile devices, EyeSpy360’s easy mobile responsiveness guarantees a flawless experience across all platforms.

The software’s interactive hotspots, customizable branding, and integrated contact forms make it a comprehensive solution for engaging and converting potential buyers.

Key Features:

  • Easy-to-Use Interface
  • High-Quality Media Support
  • Mobile Responsiveness
  • Interactive Hotspots
  • Customizable Branding
  • Integrated Contact Forms
  • 3D Real Estate Walkthroughs
  • Virtual Staging
  • Analytics and Reporting
  • Multilingual Support

Pricing:

  • Pay-as-you-go plan: $15 per tour with 1 year hosting, 1 user & 1 brand
  • Monthly Plan: $12.99 per month with unlimited hosting, 3 users & 3 brands
Eyespy360 - Best virtual tour software for real estate

7. Real Estate Exposures

Real Estate Exposure - Best virtual tour software for real estate

For creating exceptional real estate virtual tours, Real Estate Exposures offers a powerful and user-friendly solution. You need a tool that simplifies the process and It does just that with its intuitive interface.

Its high-quality media support ensures your property images and videos are crisp and detailed, giving viewers the best possible experience. Its mobile responsiveness also ensures that your tours look great on any device, from desktops to smartphones.

With features like interactive hotspots, customizable branding, and integrated contact forms, you can engage and convert potential buyers more effectively.

Real Estate Exposures is the best virtual tour software for creating captivating real estate virtual tours, 3D real estate walkthroughs, and real estate video tours.

Key Features:

  • User-friendly Interface
  • High-quality Media Support
  • Seamless Mobile Compatibility
  • Interactive Hotspots
  • Customizable Branding
  • Integrated Contact Forms
  • 3D Walkthroughs
  • Virtual Staging
  • Analytics Dashboard
  • Virtual Reality Integration

Pricing:

  • Area-based pricing: They provide different pricing from professionals.

8. iStaging

Istaging - Best virtual tour software for real estate

When it comes to showcasing properties effectively, iStaging is your go-to choice. As someone who values efficiency and professionalism, you need the best virtual tour software to elevate your real estate game.

With iStaging, you’ll experience an easy journey. Whether you’re not a continuous real estate agent or a budding property manager, iStaging helps you to create stunning 3D real estate walkthroughs and video tours effortlessly.

It’s not just software; it’s a partner that understands your needs and delivers exceptional results every time. Trust iStaging to bring your properties to life and make a lasting impression in the competitive real estate market.

Key Features:

  • Intuitive User Interface
  • High-Quality Media Support
  • Mobile Compatibility
  • Interactive Hotspots
  • Custom Branding Options
  • Built-in Contact Forms
  • 3D Virtual Tours
  • Virtual Staging Capabilities
  • Analytics and Reporting Tools
  • Virtual Reality Integration

Pricing:

  • Essential Monthly Plan: $5 per month (billed annually)
  • Advantage Monthly Plan: $150 per month (billed annually)
  • premier Monthly Plan:$390 per month (billed annually)
  • Bespoke Monthly Plan: Custom pricing according to your needs
Istaging Pricing - Best virtual tour software for real estate

Conclusion

To summarize, virtual tours play a crucial role in real estate. It offers an engaging and interactive way to showcase properties. It allows potential buyers to explore properties as if they were physically there. Thus It helps in better decision-making.

The best virtual tour software simplifies the process for real estate professionals, making it easier to present properties effectively.

These tools elevate property presentations, making them more enticing for buyers. But the problem is choosing the best software for real estate so that your work can be easy without any technical knowledge.

So you can explore the WPVR tool to enhance your website with immersive 360 virtual tours, 3D real estate walkthroughs, and captivating real estate video tours, all in one place.

** FAQs **

Is there a trial or demo version of WPVR available?

  • Yes, WPVR offers a free version for trial. You can explore basic features and functionalities with the WPVR free plugin in WordPress Repo. You can upgrade later to unlock your full potential based on your needs.

Can Kuula virtual tours be customized with branding?

  • Yes, Kuula allows branding customization, including logos and company information. It ensures brand consistency across tours.

Are Matterport Tours compatible with Google Streetview?

  • Yes, Matterport tours can be published on Google Streetview, It expands visibility and marketing opportunities for properties.

Does Klapty support password protection for tours?

  • Yes, Klapty offers password protection for tours. It ensures privacy and exclusivity for specific audiences.

How does 3D Vista handle image stitching for tours?

  • 3D Vista provides easy panorama creation, seamlessly stitching images for 360 tours. It simplifies the tour creation process.
Categories
Guide Real Estate Virtual Reality WP VR

How to Create Apartment Virtual Tour In WordPress To Rent & Sell Faster [2024]

Even though regular promotions using apartment photos and videos are still there, the way virtual tours can represent an interactive model of your apartments, traditional still images can’t.

And it’s obvious!

Virtual tours show off your apartment features without having an in-person visit.

It saves you wasted hours, cost, and hassle that you go through while showing your low potential home buyers an in-person visit.

So, whether you’re a real estate agent, realtor, property investor, or marketing manager, this guide is for you!

In this guide, I will give you a good insight into increasing conversion and a proper step-by-step guide to creating an apartment virtual tour (and no, it is not just a video tour).

So let’s dive into it.

Do You Really Need to Use Virtual Apartment Tours for Your Real Estate Business?

The answer is Yes. You need to use a virtual apartment tour.

92% of the interested buyers prefer to research on the internet first, then decide to reach out to an agent.

There are just too many competitors out there and buyers won’t think twice to move to another site if they don’t find your website appealing.

Besides, basic images and videos of properties have already become so common nowadays that people no longer find them amusing.

What Is a Virtual Apartment Tour?

Just imagine,

after all the hard work and investment you have put into building and developing your website,

your prospects are leaving your site without giving you a real chance.

Pretty frustrating, right?

So what can you do differently?

The best option now is to make an instant impression. And the most unique way to do so now is to use a virtual tour.

Instead of going to a place, a virtual tour can bring that place to you.

And people love this experience.

The longer you can keep your prospects hooked, the higher the chance they will consider reaching out to you for a deal.

So, having virtual tours is definitely the go-to solution for you.

You will find several such tools which include WPVR, Matterport, Kuula, Klapty, and many more.

The easiest of them are WPVR (for WordPress), and Klapty (though a bit expensive)

Before we look into how you can create one, let us learn what exactly a virtual apartment tour is and observe a few examples to understand why you need VR apartments on your website.

An Ideal Apartment Virtual Tour

Here is an example of a typical 360-degree apartment virtual tour:

As you can see, you have full control to view in all directions, move from one room to another easily, check out the information given inside hotspots, & use the control buttons for easier navigation.

This is an ingenious way to make your prospects get hooked right on the spot. In this guide, I will show you how you can create a virtual apartment tour on a WordPress site using WPVR.

Create an Apartment Virtual Tour in Minutes(Not Hours)

How to Do A Virtual Apartment Tour

By creating a complete virtual tour your visitors can get an overall idea of how your offered apartment looks in real life.

Simply upload a 360 panorama image, and the plugin will help you transform it into a realistic virtual tour. ( And you don’t have to wait too long for it)

So, Get rid of describing your apartment features again and again over the phone and in messages.

Simply for the steps below and you can create an apartment virtual tour in minutes.

Step 1 – Install and Activate The Virtual Tour Builder Plugin

  • Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the Plugins tab.
  • Click on Add New
  • On the search bar, insert WPVR and choose to Install and then Activate WPVR.

Install and activate it on your site, and Activate the License Key.

Now you’ll have all the premium features to create a robust virtual tour of your apartments.

If you need any help, follow this short guide to set up WPVR on your website.

Step 2 – Create A Basic Virtual Apartment Tour Really Quick

Now, we’ll create a simple virtual apartment tour in under 5 minutes.

From your WordPress Dashboard,

  • Hover on WP VR, and click on the Add New Tour option.
Create New Virtual Apartment Tour

Now, you’re in the tour settings tab.

  • Set a Title for your virtual tour.
  • Make sure that the Tour Autoload option is enabled.
    • This will automatically load your virtual apartment tour.
  • Ensure that the Basic Controls option is enabled.
    • This will enable the Zoom in, Zoom Out, and Fullscreen control buttons in your apartment virtual tour.
Create New Apartment Virtual Tour
  • Click on the Scenes section.
  • Set a unique Scene ID (Without any special characters and spaces).
  • Click on the Upload button under the Scene Upload field, and choose the first panorama image of your apartment that want to use.
Upload Scene - VR Apartment Tour
  • Scroll down and click on the Preview button.
Preview 3D Virtual Apartment Tour
  • You’ll see a live preview of the tour in the Tour Preview section. Here, you can move around to see the basic tour and use basic controls.
Preview of Modern Apartment Virtual Tour

That’s it.

As you can see, it was really easy to create a basic virtual tour.

Let’s move on to the next step.

Step 3 – Apply Useful Options To Your Scene

Now, we’ll use the advanced options of WPVR in the scene you’ve just created, to give your viewers better control of the apartment virtual tour.

Let’s keep editing the tour:

  • On the Title field, set a suitable name for this panorama.
    • For example, if the image is of the kitchen, set it as ‘Kitchen’ or ‘Kitchen – 90 SQF’.

Tip: Use this field to give your viewers a heads up on where they are in the apartment.

  • The Author field can take your viewer to any link. You can use this field as you desire.
    • You can use terms like ‘Learn more about this Kitchen’ or ‘Made By Rex Properties’.
  • In the Author URL, you can set any URL of your company website or page.
Set Title and Details to Luxury Apartment Virtual Tour
  • Remember, this URL will be activated when a viewer clicks on the Author title. So, make it relevant to that field’s text.
  • Scroll down and click on the Preview button again.

You’ll see the Title, Author, and Author URL fields working now.

3D Virtual Tour Title and Info in Preview
  • Now, scroll down and turn on the Customize Scene Zoom option.

You’ll get 3 new options that will allow you to set any zoom settings you want.

Zoom Settings - 360 Degree Apartments Tour

The Zoom values range from 50 to 120.50 is the most zoomed in, and 120 is the most zoomed out.

Default Zoom will be applied every time your viewers load this scene.

The Max Zoom and Min values will define how much your viewer can zoom in or zoom out in the tour.

Apply any zoom setting that you prefer. It’s up to you.

Now, if you preview and look at the live preview, you’ll see that all your advanced scene settings have been applied.

You can apply some other options as well:

1. Default Scene Face

Set a point in the panorama image, which you want it to load from.

2. Vertical and Horizontal Angle of View

When you’re using partial panoramas or panoramas taken with your mobile phone, the images are not full 360 degrees. You can use it to adjust those images.

3. Limit Vertical and Horizontal Scene Grab

For partial or mobile panoramas, you can set a custom value within which you want your viewers to explore.

Now, keep adding more panorama images by adding more scenes in this tour. You can use an unlimited number of images until you’ve covered every corner of your apartment.

Apply different settings to each individual Scene or the same settings for all the Scenes. Whichever you prefer.

Now, let’s enable the advanced features and make turn it into a professional virtual apartment tour.

Follow the next step.

Step 4 – Use Advanced Features – To Turn It Into A Professional Virtual Tour

First, click on the Publish button to save your progress.

Now, under the General section, click on the Advanced Controls tab.

  • Turn on these 3 options:
    • Keyboard Zoom Control, Mouse Drag Control, Mouse Zoom Control.

1. Keyboard Zoom Control: It allows your viewer to zoom in and out on the virtual tour using the plus(+) and minus(-) buttons of the keyboard.

2. Mouse Drag Control: It allows your viewer to drag and move the view of the panorama image.

3. Mouse Zoom Control: It lets your viewers zoom in and out on the panorama image using the mouse wheel.

In short, these 3 options enable smooth control on your virtual tour.

Smooth Control on Virtual Apartment Tour
  • Turn on the Gyroscope Control option.
    • When viewing from a mobile device, the Gyroscope will respond to the movement of the device. It gives great realistic control of the virtual tour to your viewers.
  • To make it even better, enable Auto Gyroscope Support.

It will turn on the Gyroscope support on smartphones by default.

Gyroscope Support - Virtual Tour Mobile Device
  • Turn on the Compass feature. It will display a live compass inside the virtual tour and help the viewers understand which directions they’re looking at.
Compass on Virtual Apartment Tour
  • Turn on the Scene Gallery option.
    • When you have multiple panorama images, it will show a slider gallery where your clients can see a preview of every panorama image in your apartment. They can also choose to visit a specific scene directly from the gallery.
  • Turn on the Scene Title on Scene Gallery option – to make your clients understand which part of the apartment the scene will take them.
360 Degree Panorama Gallery

Now, how about adding some interesting features to your apartment virtual tour?

Let’s add them right away.

  • Set Background music to your virtual tour using the Tour Background Music option.
    • Let your clients experience soothing audio the entire time they’re on your tour.

  • Set an explainer video using the Enable Explainer Video option.
    • Definitely, you want to give your clients more information about the apartment you’re showing them.
    • You can record a video explaining details of the apartment and set it here.
      Whenever your clients want to explore more, they can click it and learn about the apartment directly from you.

Background Audio on 3D Apartment Virtual Tour

Now, it’s time for your own branding.

Tell them who created this virtual tour by showing your logo and description.

Set your company logo and a description using the Add Company Information option.

 Your Logo and Information - Virtual Tour

Step 5 – Set Control Buttons – Easy Navigation for Your Client

To make the tour easier to navigate, you can turn on the control buttons.

These are the controls you can turn on:

  • Move Up.
  • Move Down.
  • Move Left.
  • Move Right.
  • Zoom In.
  • Zoom Out.
  • Full Screen.
  • Gyroscope.
  • Home Button.
Control Buttons on Apartment Virtual Tour

On top of that, you can set a different icon and color for each of these buttons.

Step 6 – Use Hotspots – Connect Panorama Images & Show Additional Info

Once you’ve set up one panorama image, you can now upload more and connect them.

Remember to keep the sequence between your images.

For example, if your tour starts from the entrance of your apartment, the next one should lead to the living room or the bedroom that is right beside the living room.

And if your viewer is leaving that bedroom, it should take them back to the living room.

The sequence of the images must reassablence the apartment in real life.

You have to use the Scene-type hotspots to connect the scenes.

Here is a small guide to connecting panorama images in your virtual apartment tour.

On top of that, you can use the Info-type hotspots to show in-depth details about the apartment.

The content you can set in the hotspots:

  • Images.
  • Texts.
  • Videos (YouTube, Vimeo, & Self-hosted).
  • GIFs.
  • URLs (Open on a new tab or the same tab).
  • Buttons.
  • Combination of everything above.
Hotspot To Show Information - Virtual Tour

You can set these to both on-hover and on-click actions of the hotspots.

To add more content and customize the hotspots, follow this guide.

Bonus Tips To Make A Luxury Apartment Virtual Tour Stand Out From Your Competitors

If you’ve made it this far in this guide, then great job!

In this section, I have something for you that’ll pay off your patience.

Suppose you’ve followed all the steps in this guide to make the perfect apartment virtual tour.

Now, all you need to do is make the viewer contact you and start the process of conversion.

Here’s how,

Inside every panorama scene of your tour set a hotspot that will contain a contact form or email submission form.

You can go one step further by adding a different contact form in every scene.

Example:

  • In the Kitchen scene, invite them to drop their email – to learn more about the water supply & gas stove setup options.
  • In the Entrance or outdoor scenes, ask them to give you their contact – to learn about the lawn diameters and neighboring community rules.

The easiest way to generate more leads would be to keep the form as minimal as possible. Just asking them to type in their name, email address, and the best time to call back would be great.

But, you can also add a couple of questions to qualify them for your case such as their budget, expected time to rent, etc.

And this, you can easily set up using WPVR.

The Benefits of Using this Latest Trend: Convert Prospects Into Potential Buyers

Today there are several creative ways to handle prospects that help to boost conversion.

And one of the proven ways now is to use virtual tours on your website.

Webpages with virtual tours receive 5-10 times longer views.

Here’s how it works.

  1. Get prospects to visit your website.
  2. Hook them with engaging apartment virtual tours they can’t ignore.
  3. Give them a glimpse of exactly what they will get in real life.
  4. Get them interested and pre-qualified while on the tour.
  5. Make the prospects book a time for you to call back.

Advantages of Using Virtual Tour:

  • The user will not have to worry about traveling to get a live view of the apartment.
  • An apartment virtual tour with navigation control means prospects are not bound to a fixed view. They can view and move around however they want. This will gain more trust.
  • People will already get to make a temporary decision on the apartment of their choice.
  • You can include more details on the apartment within the tour, which you would normally explain via phone.
  • And most importantly, you can have the buyers fill out a form to get a call back right on the virtual apartment tour.

You can create an engaging apartment virtual tour without any complications using the right tool. And we mentioned and demonstrated WPVR here. You can easily go with it.

Conclusion 

As you can see, a virtual tour is the next best thing to a live visit. And it is also a key option to stand out among your competitors.

Plus, as you saw, creating apartment virtual tours is relatively easy and quite affordable. So it’s high time you, too should, start using virtual tours to sell or rent more apartments easily.

Keep your prospects hooked and convert them into buyers with the latest trend that works.

If you own a WordPress site, then go ahead and start using WPVR and start closing more deals.

Categories
Guide Virtual Reality WP VR

5 Types Of Virtual Reality – Get The Perfect VR Solution [2025]

Technology today is moving fast.

The latest innovations include Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Blockchain, the Internet of Things, and many more.

Among these breakthroughs, Virtual Reality is reshaping how we interact with the digital world, bridging the gap between imagination and reality.

Currently, around 171 million people use VR globally in some form.

Today I will discuss 5 most popular types of virtual reality that are really out of the box.

Let’s get started.

What Is Virtual Reality?

Virtual Reality refers to creating a realistic experience that does not exist in reality.

It is a virtual experience that you can observe, listen to, and interact with, but cannot touch.

What is virtual reality?

Sounding complex?

Let me explain it a bit deeper.

For example, in a remote virtual tour, you will feel like you are actually taking a tour of that place.

However, in reality, you are sitting at your home and taking an amazing virtual tour through your computer, while still getting to look around the place as if you are physically there.

Over the years, people have developed many forms of virtual reality that they are using for innovative purposes. Some popular virtual reality examples include virtual medical training, virtual skills practice, games, virtual tours of homes or hotels, and many more.

Industries such as real estate, hotels, amusement parks, research facilities, army officials, motor companies, machine development companies, and many more industries have started using some forms of virtual reality to attain greater results in their business and purposes.

For example, Porche has introduced the types of VR experience,

that allow their users to take a ride in the latest car virtually, mainly to experience the car’s finesse, luxurious interior, the technology used, and customization visualization.

And you can too!

5 Different Types of Virtual Reality

To find the right type of virtual reality that matches your needs, You need to know the best ones among all the VR types.

Among tons of VR formats, pick one among these 5 innovative virtual reality types.

  • Non-immersive Virtual Reality.
  • Fully Immersive Virtual Reality.
  • Semi-Immersive Virtual Reality.
  • Augmented Reality.
  • Collaborative VR.

Now let’s learn in-depth one by one:

1. Non-immersive Virtual Reality

Non-immersive virtual reality is a virtual experience through a desktop. You can control characters or activities within the software.

You can also find a powerpack laptop for virtual machines and work on the go.

Since more and more people appreciate mobility, manufacturers create powerful systems in compact bodies.

For example, when you play video games such as World of WarCraft, you can control characters within the game that have their own animations and attributes.

(Interestingly, over the years, several science conferences have been held within the World of Warcraft ‘world’. Utilizing the platform instead of a traditional web conferencing system while creating an innovative experience for members. This, of course, has its benefits compared to traditional means.)

Technically, you are dealing with a virtual world, but you are not the center of attention in the game.

All actions or features interact with the characters within.

Non-immersive VR

All basic forms of gaming devices, such as PlayStation, Xbox, Computer, other video game consoles, and even input devices such as mouse keyboards, etc, provide you with a non-immersive virtual reality experience.

The US Defence Force suggested that strategic games may help to develop the planning and strategic expertise of the US Army back in 2017. This has been put in effective use since the Summer of 2018.

2. Fully Immersive Virtual Reality

Contrary to non-immersive virtual reality, fully immersive virtual technology ensures that you have a realistic experience within the virtual world.

It’ll give you a sense of being present in that virtual world, and everything is happening to you for real.

This is an expensive form of virtual reality that involves helmets, gloves, and body connectors with sense detectors.

These are connected to a powerful computer. Your movements, reactions, and even a blink of an eye are detected and projected within the virtual world.

You will feel like you are within the virtual world physically.

One example could be a Virtual Shooter gaming zone where you will be equipped with the gears in a small room and you will be viewing a virtual world through the helmet where you are facing other shooters trying to kill you.

You will move your arms and body to run, jump, crouch, shoot, throw, and many more within the game.

A new concept of virtual medical training is being looked at to train neurosurgeons to avoid disasters during risky brain operations.

Another potential fully immersive virtual reality that’s becoming popular nowadays is transforming the education sector.

Many more such concepts are coming to life and hopefully will result in making our lives better.

Fully immersive virtual reality is costly and not so widely created yet.

3. Semi-immersive Virtual Reality

A Semi immersive virtual reality is a mixture of non-immersive and fully immersive virtual reality.

This can be in the form of a 3D space or virtual environment where you can move about on your own, either through a computer screen or a VR box/headset.

So all activities within the virtual world are concentrated toward you.

However, you have no real physical movements other than your visual experience.

On a computer, you can use the mouse to move about the virtual space, and on mobile devices, you can touch and swipe to move about the place.

Semi-immersive VR

Most semi-immersive virtual environments support Gyroscope, which means the virtual space will be fixed on your phone based on the vertical axis, and you have to literally move your phone about in different directions to view the virtual environment in those directions.

Swiping will not work.

The ones that are connected to VR boxes are more interactive since they are also a form of Gyroscope, but without you using your hands.

When you wear a VR box/headset, you will only be able to see the virtual environment and not your real world, even from the corner of your eye. Thus creating a realistic experience.

Semi-immersive virtual reality is the most cost-effective and commonly used among all forms of virtual reality after non-immersive VR. It’s especially used for training and educational purposes.

It can be used to provide students with immersive, interactive educational experiences like exploration of historical events, and distant planets, and even scouting oceans from the classroom. Ultimately helping teachers to teach more engagingly and realistically rather than sticking to theoretical explanations only.

A virtual tour is the most popular semi immersive virtual reality that most businesses are embracing today.

They can be both device-based and web-based. Overall, they provide an interactive virtual experience.

It is mostly used in businesses such as real estate websites, hotels, local bars or pubs, universities, schools, and many more businesses that rely on highlighting and promoting their locations.

Types Of Virtual Reality - Create virtual tours with WPVR

4. Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is when a certain entity or device seems to be present in reality but is actually not.

Rather than putting you into a virtual world, a virtual entity is placed in the real world through any device.

For example, through your mobile screen, you can view your room and probably place a cartoon character in the corner. You will be able to see the character through your mobile screen and not in reality.

It is mostly used by businesses such as furniture suppliers or decorators.

For example, a person willing to buy a table will be able to place the table in his room through his phone display.

This will let him understand if this table is suitable and looks good in his room or if he has to choose another design.

Augmented reality often is argued to be a unique form of technology rather than VR. There are also a few technology consulting services that often assist in implementing augmented reality solutions effectively.

But its ability to place entities virtually often puts it within the VR category.

5. Collaborative VR

This is a form of a virtual world where different people from various locations can come into contact within a virtual environment, usually in the form of 3D or projected characters.

Types Of Virtual Reality - Collaborative VR

For example, Unity game development has also embraced the concept of virtual collaboration, much like the video game called PUBG (Players Unknown Battle-Ground), where tons of players come into existence as individual virtual characters that they can control. Similarly, the integration of hybrid casual elements in virtual reality games is becoming increasingly popular, offering a unique blend of simplicity and engagement.

Much like the transformative impact of igaming development in its sector, VR technologies are paving the way for innovative experiences across various domains.

Here they can interact with each other through microphones, headsets, and chatting.

Recently people are getting used to virtual meeting rooms to conduct business meetings remotely, or for conducting virtual debate competitions.

For those interested in enhancing their virtual collaboration, learning how to conduct virtual meetings effectively is crucial, offering a blend of convenience and efficiency in today’s digital landscape. Exploring AR VR development services can significantly enhance these virtual experiences, the main goal of this form of VR is to create collaboration between people. As virtual reality continues to improve over time, the advancement of translation for VR will pave the way for immersive multilingual experiences.

The Perfect Tool to Make Virtual Tour

Now think and choose what type of virtual reality you want to experience. I know what you are thinking.

How can you make a virtual tour right?

Making a virtual tour can sound too complex. But by using WPVR, you can do it very easily with just 3 steps!

5 Types Of Virtual Reality – Get The Perfect VR Solution [2025] 1

First, take 360° panorama images, and then :

  1. Connect these Panorama Scenes
  2. Use Scene-type Hotspots so all the 360-degree images join together
  3. Show information in the virtual tours using info hotspots and hit publish!

And that’s it, you’ve created your desired virtual tour!

Features of WPVR

And you can share your virtual tour on social media very easily.

Using WPVR you can easily share your 360-degree virtual tours on your desired Social Media Platforms like

  • Facebook,
  • LinkedIn,
  • Twitter,
  • Email, and
  • Reddit.

not just that you can generate a QR Code automatically for your virtual tour and send it anywhere, and you too can view or show your virtual tour without any web page!

You also don’t have to worry about how to do plugin installation and activation process, As we have created 82 pieces of documentation from installation to all the minor Major setting step by step.

Go through WPVR Documentation.

If you want to learn by watching YouTube videos, We have a complete playlist on WPVR

You can also check out this article: Complete Guide To Create A Virtual Tour.

Conclusion

As you can see, these are the most popular types of VR available out there. With time, the quality of virtual reality is getting better and better.

More and more businesses are implementing different forms of virtual reality, mostly virtual tours, and virtual meeting rooms, to improve their engagement with their prospects and business module.

If you haven’t looked into it yet, I suggest you start thinking about using virtual reality to stay on par with this advanced world.

FAQs

1. What are the main types of virtual reality?


The main types include non-immersive, semi-immersive, fully immersive, augmented reality (AR), and collaborative VR.

2. What is the difference between AR and VR?


AR overlays digital elements in the real world, while VR creates a fully immersive, computer-generated environment.

3. How is semi-immersive VR used?


Semi-immersive VR is often used in training simulations, like flight or medical training, to blend digital and physical interaction.

4. What industries benefit from collaborative VR?


Collaborative VR enhances industries like education, architecture, and business by enabling virtual teamwork and shared spaces.

5. Why is fully immersive VR significant?


Fully immersive VR offers complete engagement with a virtual environment, ideal for gaming, therapy, and advanced simulations.

Categories
WordPress WP VR

12 Benefits of Virtual Field Trips Every Educator Should Know [2025]

Field trips sound great—until you start planning one.

The cost, the paperwork, the permission slips that never come back, and the constant worry of losing a student in a crowd. By the time the trip actually happens, you’re too exhausted to enjoy it.

Now, imagine taking your students to the Great Wall of China or deep into the Amazon rainforest—without the hassle, the cost, or the stress. That’s exactly what virtual field trips offer.

For many students, real-world exploration isn’t always possible. Travel costs, logistics, and other barriers can make traditional field trips difficult to pull off.

Virtual field trips remove those obstacles, making it easy to expose your students to new places, ideas, and experiences—all from the classroom. Plus, they make teaching more interactive, engaging, and, let’s be honest, a lot less stressful for you.

Let’s dive into the biggest benefits of virtual field trips in your lessons.

What are virtual field trips?

First, let’s learn what virtual field trips actually are.

Virtual field trips basically let you take your students to places they might never visit in real life, all from the classroom. Instead of physically traveling, you use technology—videos, live streams, interactive maps, or VR—to explore museums, historical sites, national parks, or even space.

virtual field trip

For example, if you’re teaching a history lesson on ancient Egypt, you can take your students on a virtual tour of the pyramids. They can explore hidden chambers, see ancient carvings up close, and listen to expert explanations—all without leaving their seats.

It makes learning more interactive and engaging while removing the limitations of cost and travel.

How do virtual field trips work?

Setting up a virtual field trip is simple. You only need a device with internet access and a reliable platform. Here’s how it works:

i. Choose a topic:

Decide what subject or location you want to explore. It could be a historical site, a science lab, or a cultural experience.

ii. Select a platform:

Websites like Google Earth, National Geographic, or museum archives offer free and paid virtual field trips. Some are interactive, while others are guided videos.

iii. Prepare your students:

Set expectations and provide context before the trip. You can introduce key points, ask guiding questions, or assign tasks to keep them engaged.

iv. Experience the trip:

Depending on the format, students can watch, explore, or even interact with experts through live Q&A sessions.

v. Discuss and review:

After the trip, encourage students to share their observations, complete an activity, or reflect on what they learned.

With these simple steps, you can turn any lesson into an immersive learning experience without the hassle of planning a physical trip.

Why Should Educators Use Virtual Field Trips In The Classroom?

Not just mere words, let me show you some proven data from research.com that indicates how effective field trips are

in terms of increasing your student’s knowledge base.

Research data of positive impact of virtual field trip

Source

See how good student feels as they are rating “virtual field trips” really high :

Percentag of student survey who are rating virtual field trip high.

Source

Not only about feeling amazing, most of the students learn more properly when the process goes with the term “ Learn with fun”

The neurologist Judy Willis demonstrated how enjoyable experiences increase the levels of dopamine and endorphins in our brains.

Dopamine, known as the “feel-good hormone,” can make learning feel pleasurable and rewarding.

These hormones play a crucial role in effective learning.

Now I am going to going to explain the benefits in five categories :

Benefits of virtual field tour

Learning Benefits of Virtual Field Trips

Let’s go through 3 learning benefits of virtual field trips now:

1. Self-perception of learning

Virtual Field Trips are full of learning potential.

Even though virtual field trips can’t take your students to different places physically, they can make learning more engaging and hands-on.

When done well, virtual field trips can make students feel like they are there, teach them new things, and get them excited about the topic.

Virtual field trips allow students to customize and adjust the experience to fit their personal needs and preferred way of learning. For example, students can often pause the virtual activities or go through them at their own speed. Virtual fields can help students solve math problems by providing interactive, context-based experiences and simplifying abstract concepts into understandable, real-life situations

You can read this research paper on the learning impact of VFT to get a deeper knowledge of how impactful learning VFT can bring to your classroom.

2. Helpful in K-12 education

After looking at many different research studies, scientists at the University of Sao Paulo found proof that virtual field trips can help teach students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

They found multiple studies where using virtual reality headsets for virtual education trips helped students learn better.

The researchers found educational VR provided significant benefits beyond just engagement. It led to improved skills-based learning outcomes as well as better knowledge recall and comprehension compared to non-VR settings.

3. Exposure to Experts

With pre-recorded virtual field trips, your students have discussions and interviews with subject matter experts.

Exposer to experts

Source

Students are often excited to have the opportunity to talk directly with the explorer.

If you can manage video conferencing on your field trip with platforms like Skype or social media channels, your students can post their queries and receive real-time responses from the experts.

Virtual field tour idea for science background

Source

Here the benefit of virtual field trips for students is that it’s a small step towards active learning. 

Your students can see a place with their own eyes and ask questions to an expert who has been there and experienced it. 

Your students are far more likely to remember a topic when they can find the opportunity to engage, participate, and experience it themselves.

Engagement Benefits of Virtual Field Trips

We know what you are thinking!- My students will only look at a screen, where and how engagement between your students will come?

Here’s your answers :

4. Engage Student’s Senses More

Instead of just listening to a teacher talk, virtual trips can allow your students to see realistic visuals, hear sounds, and even interact using hand motions or controllers.

For example, on a virtual trip to the rainforest, students might see vivid 360-degree videos of the dense foliage and bright colors.

They could hear the sounds of birds squawking and monkeys howling.

5. Embodied Interaction Increases Student Engagement

The researchers discovered that being able to interact and experience things is extremely important for keeping students engaged. This kind of interaction is called embodied interaction.

When students can use multiple senses and truly interact with the learning material, they tend to be more excited about and involved in their learning process.

We all know how boring it can be to just sit and listen to a lecture without any way to participate meaningfully.

Accessibility Benefits of Virtual Field Trips

Virtual field tours break down barriers and below I listed down some accessibility opportunities that Virtual Field Trip open up :

6. Students with mobility restrictions

Virtual field trips allow students who have difficulty moving around or traveling to still experience going on a field trip.

They can join from wherever they are without needing to physically go to a new place. This is a great benefit of virtual field trips for students who are always on the go.

7. Students who are immunocompromised

For students whose bodies have a hard time fighting off illnesses, virtual trips are safer and easier than physical ones.

You can avoid risking your differently able students getting exposed to germs or catching something by traveling.

8. Students can access it from anywhere

No matter where your student lives or what their situation is, they can take part in a virtual field trip.

As long as they have a computer or device with internet, they can virtually go on a trip from their home, school, hospital, or anywhere else.

So, VFT is a great way to get fewer empty seats in your classrooms.

Collaboration Benefits of Virtual Field Trips

Virtual field trips share a sense of community collaboration. Now let’s go through some collaboration benefits of VFT :

9. Expanding Geographically

Virtual field trips allow your students and you to explore places and connect with people from all around the world, without having to travel there physically.

They can virtually visit museums, historical sites, national parks, and even other countries or cities that would normally be too far away or too expensive to go to in real life.

This expands the learning experience beyond the local geography and community, opening up opportunities to learn about diverse cultures, environments, and perspectives from a much broader geographic scope.

10. Share And Adapt the same virtual resources

Virtual engagement and remote collaboration can indeed help you to facilitate a spaced, interleaved, and practice-oriented approach to deep learning. Your students can share virtual resources among themselves which will increase their soft skills of collaboration and teamwork.

Financial Benefits of Virtual Field Trips

11. Cost Effectiveness

Virtual engagements obviously eliminate the need for travel, which is a big bang savings.

This is one of the big benefits of virtual field trips for teachers.

Also, you can play role a in saving the environment by reducing carbon emissions from flights and road transportation of physical field trips.

VFGs can potentially cut off some of the issues that physical field trips can create.

Traditional field trips principally those of an international nature have several disadvantages.

Because of the costs often many students cannot afford to participate.

Also, There may be gendered issues, cultural and language barriers, logistical issues, security issues, and problems in creating accurate risk assessments without prior visits by staff (Ternan, Charlkley, & Elmes, 1999).

Last But Not Least Benefits of Virtual Field Trips

12. Simplifying Teacher Experience

For teachers like you, organizing a traditional in-person field trip can be very complicated and stressful.

You need to plan transportation, lunches, chaperones, and permission slips, and juggle their regular teaching schedule around the trip day.

With virtual field trips, these kinds of hassles go away. You don’t have to worry about buses, packing meals, or finding enough parent volunteers.

You can schedule the virtual trip anytime that works best for their class schedule.

You can offer more to students while putting in less effort.

Create Virtual Field Trips by Your Own

To create a virtual field trip for your students, First research well for the type of content your students are mostly attracted to.

Then start making your virtual trips.

Here are a few things you’ll need:

First, you’ll need cameras to capture 360-degree photos or video footage of the places you want to virtually visit.

Next, you’ll need software that allows you to stitch those 360 photos/videos together into an immersive virtual tour experience.

WPVR offers an easy-to-use interface that allows you to create virtual tours rapidly, even if you don’t have any prior experience or expertise.

You can put together a basic virtual tour in under 5 minutes!

WPVR- Best virtual tour  tool.

If you need assistance, WPVR provides helpful resources like YouTube videos & documentation for setting up and using it properly.

Become an Innovative Education Leader

With virtual field trips, you can provide your students with something better than dull regular classes.

Also, in this fast-paced growing world,

you need to take some extra steps to teach our students more than traditional teachers do.

To research well and pick the content idea,

you can go through the Discovery Education portal.

Then just plan your trip and use a reliable tool to help you make your virtual field trips.

FAQs

1. What is the advantage of the field method?

The field method allows direct experience, real-world context, increased motivation and engagement, skill development, and interdisciplinary learning by conducting research or observations in authentic settings.

2. What are some virtual field trip examples?

Examples include exploring the Louvre Museum, touring NASA’s space stations, visiting the Great Wall of China, and diving into marine life with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

3. Do virtual field trips cost money?

Some are free, like Google Earth tours, while others, like live expert-led sessions, may require a fee.

4. What do I need for a virtual field trip?

You only need an internet-connected device, a reliable platform, and a structured plan to keep students engaged.

5. How do virtual field trips benefit students?

They provide access to real-world learning experiences without travel costs, making lessons more interactive and engaging.