We are pleased to announce several new enhancements to the FloorPlanOnline marketing system:
1. Enhanced iPad Tour Viewer
2. Separate Photo & Video Editing
3. Voice Over | Custom Audio Upload capability
Details for each enhancement are below.
Enhanced iPad Viewer.
We have completely re-written our tour viewer for the iPad which features your tour content in a very clean user interface. Now, you can get a fully functional tour experience, including the video and the interactive floorplan tour on your ipad! Just point and click your way around the floor plan with ease, just like the regular PC experience. It is also optimized for the screen orientation. Hold your iPad in landscape mode, and the content tabs are on top and the content layout is optimized for that view. Rotate the iPad to portrait mode, and the tabs move to the side and content shifts for that orientation as well. We believe it is the most advanced and useful tour viewer for the iPad. Plus, if you have an Apple TV device, you can even play the video on your TV! How cool is that?
Suggestions. In order to make the iPad tour look its best, we suggest you add a marketing description, complete the property details, and add features. We have a details tab that really showcases the property details. We even include the PDF of your flyer and printable floor plans. For older tours, video might not be viewable on your iPad tour due to a different format needed to display the video on the iPad. This can easily be added by just going into your account to the Manage Tour page, then click Edit Tour, then Edit Photos/Video. Hit Save and Close, and your video will get processed by our video server. We have already recreated over 1000 videos for tours going back to the end of October. So if your tour does not have a Video tab on the tour, just go in and edit it, or email us and we can re-queue all of your videos. One other point. There is no RoomPlanner tab on the iPad. This tool is built using flash, and there is a lot of development work to port it over to the iPad….so until that happens (or flash comes to the iPad (likely never)), the RoomPlanner will not be on the iPad version.
This enhancement is included at no additional cost for any active tour, and one reason it took us awhile to implement, so it works on all older tours! Try it – just go to www.111anystreet.com on your iPad. Note…this tour also works on any computer. There are a few tweaks we want to do, but eventually, it can also be your default tour template for the PC as well. Click here to see the PC version on your laptop or desktop.
Separate Photo & Video Editing.
We now have a way for you to separately edit which photos show on the Photo Gallery and WalkThru Video views. It is all done through the same edit page – we just added another check box to show a photo on the Photo View or Video view, or both. When you upload, all photos are added to both by default, but you can adjust what shows by going to the Edit Tour option on the Manage Tours page. With this (and the custom audio tool mentioned below), you can further differentiate the photo and video views.
Suggestions. We highly recommend you keep your video between 1 to 2 minutes in length. Most users will not sit through a 5 minute long video…but if you highlight the best photos taken, add descriptive text, and now, even add a voice over, you can really make your video a multi-media marketing piece that makes you and your listing stand out. And don’t forget, you can easily and automatically add your listing video to either your own custom YouTube channel (or your company’s channel provided you give us the login info) or just upload it to our YouTube channel. It is FREE, and it is a great way to get additional search engine (“SEO”) benefits. For example, once your video has been uploaded and indexed by Google, the listing video typically shows towards the top on page 1 of the search results. Just this little feature can show your seller that you are working hard to sell their home and differentiate it from all of the others.
If you like the Dashboard view on your tour, pick a different photo to start the photo or video view, and now you have 2 different images on the Dashboard view in the 2.0 tour.
Voice Over | Custom Audio Upload.
This is something that has been asked for over the years…and we now have brought it to fruition! You can now upload your own voiceover to the video so you can describe the property in your own way. Google is now indexing video text, so this also helps with the SEO of your tours, and you. Plus, since we upload your video for free to YouTube, it gets better indexed by Google, since they own YouTube. Read more on that here. You can also upload a file with your own music. Just go to Manage Tours, select Edit Tour and then Edit Video. You will see the button to upload the custom audio file. Right now, we ONLY accept MP3 file types. There are lots of free converters online if you have the file in a different type.
A word of caution: While you in theory can upload your own music with a voiceover, the music industry is on a war path about copyright violations. Using music on a virtual tour is for a commercial purpose that requires a license from the copyright holder. All of our music is validly licensed by companies the create or manage the music. Therefore, if you have your own music you want to use, just make sure you have a valid license to use it. Real songs from real artists generally mean big money for a right to use – like thousands of dollars….so if we do find “brand-name artist” music being used, we will be forced to remove the file. They have ways of electronically monitoring websites, and you do not want to have to pay fines or get sued…Neither do we….
Hope you enjoy the enhancements!
Kris Cone
We are happy to announce that we now can distribute your FloorPlanOnline listings to Zillow, Yahoo Real Estate and other sites powered by Zillow! Zillow and Yahoo have a combined reach of over 10% of Internet users going to real estate websites, so it is a great way for your listing to get seen. While many of you already have your listings distributed to Zillow by your company or MLS, some do not. We therefore have added this as an option in your profile under Edit Linking Profile. Just check the box and we will upload your listing info, and link to the virtual tour, to Zillow/Yahoo.
Plus, the tour will show up with the YouTube video icon (like at left), and video we know is one thing that attracts users to click. So you have a higher chance of people clicking on your YouTube video listing and ultimately getting back to you, vs a large real estate portal site.
