Are Virtual Tours a Covid-19 Quick Fix, Or Are They Here to Stay?

Your potential customers can’t physically access your properties due to the Coronavirus and social distancing. That doesn’t mean you can’t welcome them into one of your listings virtually…

Virtual tours have been around for a while but the impacts of social distancing have brought them to the forefront. Virtual tours have gone from a nice to have, to a business essential. Agencies offering virtual tours have opened the virtual door to all their listings, during a time where people are stuck in their homes.

Those agencies at the cutting edge of technology have the best chance of servicing clients through this difficult period. As people grow accustomed to remote working and digital living, customers will still be seeking virtual tour experiences long after restrictions are lifted. The shift to online real estate was already happening, it’s just been given a rocket boost.

The customer journey begins online, with 90% of purchasers doing their initial searches online. Customers are expecting control over their entire decision-making process and expect dynamic and customisable tools; gone are the days when brochures and leaflets are valued by the customer. A trend which has only been increased by Covid-19 restrictions. Virtual tours speak to this mindset, the viewer has control over how much time they spend in each room, where they look and what they zoom in on – it also alleviates awkwardness for the customer, who can review a full property at their own pace, by themselves.

A virtual tour is an easy decision for any potential client that’s in lock-down or experiencing social distancing. They can view any property securely and safely from the comfort of their own home, with the confidence they are seeing every inch of the space.

Our latest product feature, Guided Viewing, even allows you to accompany potential clients through a virtual tour in a video call format, allowing you to mirror the experience of a live viewing as closely as possible. Even once social distancing regulations are removed, an agency that has embraced virtual tours and Remote Viewing will be able to squeeze more viewings into a day as there is no travel time involved; employees can be working on other things up until the moment the tour starts.

At Giraffe360, we’ve received multiple client stories on closing deals virtually.

“Now that we are no longer permitted to do viewings in person, we have switched all of our viewings to online-fully interactive viewings. All of our properties already had walk through tours using 360 degree photos of every room; but with Giraffe360’s innovative tools, we can now use these tours in a Skype-like call where we walk our clients through the property. The effect is a viewing that’s close to the real experience: the 360 degree photos are amazing and give a really good ‘feel’ for the property, and the video-link makes the virtual viewing far more personal than just a pre-recorded video of the property. It is hard for key-workers to find a new home in today’s market, but if you have to move; being able to view a property virtually is an amazing alternative. All in all, using our Giraffe360 our transactions have remained as good as stable, which is a tremendous result!”

Dennis Roodhardt ,Managing Director, Martin & Co.
Residential Estate Agency in Dover, UK.

How Are Giraffe360 Virtual Tours Created?

As with all the Giraffe360 features, the virtual tours are captured with the single push of a button. Using our state of the art camera technology, the quality of the virtual tour content sets us apart from the competition. Customers need to feel confident they are seeing every detail of the space when they are viewing a property virtually.

Virtual tours are automatically created in stunning 270-megapixel resolution. This is cutting edge technology, designed to capture the very feel and dimensional replication of any property or space on your listings.

The Features of a Giraffe360 Virtual Tour

Once captured, the virtual tours are automatically stored on Cloud servers and can be shared easily on any platforms. A panorama can even be embedded into a Facebook post.
Agencies can opt for basic and easy to set-up packages, or request extra features for a more advanced customer. These advanced features include information points that pop up within the tour providing customers with points of interest. All Giraffe360 products ship with a setup and a dedicated account manager so you can get up and running quickly and efficiently.

Through the use of a mobile or desktop, your customers can experience an immersive visualisation of their property of choice. All this, from the comfort of their front room and sofa. The navigation is intuitive and straightforward, simply direct the POV camera through any property or space, using the handy floor plan as a guide to your location within the building.

The Giraffe360 virtual tour can be reskinned to fit your agency look and feel. A range of elements are brandable and a watermark can be added. This ensures the customers experience consistency across all your marketing touchpoints.

We have spent tens of thousands of hours, analyzed millions of user journeys and designed hundreds of different tests to create the perfect experience. For us, virtual tours have always been a digital window to understand any property and we have created a user interface with that goal in mind.

It was once sufficient for estate agents to rely on the combination of listing photography and a great in-person viewing to sell a property. This has begun to change as customer decision-making adapts to this lock-down landscape. According to a study by the American National Association of Realtors, only 14% of realtors used virtual tours to promote their properties, whereas 45% of buyers told researchers that they found “virtual tours to be really useful”.

Those looking to buy or rent a property, still need to get a thorough and high-quality experience of their property of choice – that hasn’t changed. The Giraffe360 virtual tours are the perfect way to bring a high-quality viewing experience to your customer’s hands.

Using Virtual Tours Beyond Lockdown

Giraffe360 virtual tours offer your estate agency a host of competitive advantages. They’ll provide flexibility to ride out a wider range of future black swan events that change the day-to-day running of your business.

Virtual tours can be seamlessly integrated with your client’s customer journey and should be viewed as a powerful content asset. Through our analysis, we discovered that 45% of users that enter the virtual tour click more than 30 times. That means more time spent in your listings by highly interested potential clients, without the extra strain on your employees.

Our Giraffe360 performance data suggests that the virtual tour needs to be used after the customer has passed the first interest stage; think of virtual tours as a content marketing tool. Our data shows that over 60% of all users that enter the description page of a listing, open a virtual tour. These are your most interested leads and should be capitalised upon.

A virtual tour also provides your agency with a boost to scale operations. If multiple clients are virtually touring your listings at the same time without an agent present, that’s a huge efficiency increase. Imagine trying to fit all those clients into a physical property at the same time, or booking back to back viewings! Over time, as consumers become more accustomed to remote viewings; the sophistication of Giraffe360 virtual tours will set your agency apart from the competition.