How to create virtual tours with 3D floor plans

Archilogic helps office providers promote and sell office space through 3D floor plans, office design simulations and property data insights. Here we provide the top tips for creating the perfect online virtual tour of you office space.

Having an interactive 3D virtual tour of your property can help drive sales and reduce sales lead times by over 50%. But what makes a good virtual tour?

1. Customize your pitch

If you are looking to close a big deal and need to give the client a more personal approach, then create a customized 3D floor plan and virtual tour that is perfect for their specific needs. Especially when selling office space, it can be difficult to find a visualization that works for all potential clients. Different head counts, different styles, different uses can mean even a generic 3D floor plan is not enough to build the vision with your client.

By customizing the color palette, adding their branding or having a focus on particular rooms can help your client engage with the property and really visualize living or working in that space.

2. Start from an open, well-lit room

When starting a virtual tour, it’s best to begin in an open space of the 3D floor plan. Find a room that has a lot of light pouring into it and clear visibility of the main areas. For smaller properties, it may be best to start from the corner or next to a wall in the biggest room to give an impression of more space.

By having a large open space, you have the opportunity to view the biggest part of the property from a single spot while you introduce the space. The depth of the room will entice the viewer to explore deeper into the property.

A brightly lit 3D floor plan can help improve the appearance of a property. As it’s a digital plan, you can make sure that the daylight is always in the right spot to best show off the space.

3. Mix first person and bird’s eye viewpoints

For large properties, clients can be easily disorientated during a tour - real or virtual. An advantage of virtual tours is that you can easy and smoothly switch to a bird’s eye view of the 3D floor plan.

It’s important to keep your client’s mind focussed on how they can use the space rather than figuring out where exactly in the property they are. If they stop listening to you, then you may lose their attention for the big sales pitch moment.

Equally, small properties will benefit from including a perspective from above. Some rooms in smaller properties are not ideal for first-person perspectives in 3D virtual tours. Storage cupboards, extra bathrooms, and stairways do not necessarily need to be seen from a first-person viewpoint. Instead, you can glide over them from above and still see the furniture inside the room without going into detail.

Whichever size your property is, it always helps to have some variation in perspectives to break up the tour and keep the viewer engaged.

4. Include 3D floor plan data in your pitch

Having a digital 3D floor plan means you can access a huge amount of data about the space. Take advantage of this by including facts and statistics in your online listing, virtual tour video or in-person talk-track.

Data such as room area, headcount, asset quantities, and circulation space can all be instantly extracted from a paper floor plan when you use Archilogic’s online floor plan dashboard.

Data points and impressive facts can go a long way to help close a deal.