Real Estate Info :: Virtual Tours | Interactive Floor Plans

Archive for Real Estate Info – Page 2

Tour Tweaks Released!

by Kris Cone

December 30th, 2010

The FloorPlanOnline developers have been working like elves this holiday season. We just released what we call the “Tour Tweaks” case. The case is mainly some visual changes to the look and feel of the FloorPlanOnline tours based on feedback from our customers, including:

Your Photo and Contact info moved to the top left….and it always shows on the tour with your name in bold!
Your Logo moved to the top right
The top of the tour is cleaned up with the price, MLS, etc. moved to the Descriptions & Details
Ability to select the tour template (the layout and look) as your place an order – choose our Classic Tour 1.0 (our original tour design) or the Webpage 2.0 design (the current default tour with customizable colors and more integrated content).
Contact Pop-up now only shows when a user clicks on it. And, we have added a downloadable business card called a vCard. People can save your contact info, including your photo, into Outlook or Contacts (Apple users) with the click of a button.
On the Dashboard view, we have make the content “bright” by default, and when a user mouses over a media item, that section dims.
We have made it clearer that the Media icons on the left are clickable by changing the mouse icon to a hand. This is important for tours with a very light background color.

See an overview of these changes in this video.

A few things to note.
1. For best results, we suggest you re-upload your photo and your logo. Some of you may have your photo combined with your logo, which will still look fine, but if you want your photo next to your contact info, re-upload both. If you only upload your logo, you will end up with 2 photos showing on the tour.
2. Logos that are more square vs a long rectangle will look best.
3. We show 2 phone numbers on the face of the tour, then other numbers on the contact business card. If the 2 numbers you want are not showing, try selecting them, or changing them, in your profile.

If you have a particular color in your logo and you want to match that with the background color of your tour, you can do that. We suggest using either PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements and the color eye-drop tool to get the right color code, or if you use Firefox for your browser, install the Colorzilla plugin (its free), and click on the color you want to use with Colorzilla, and then find the hex code (it will display at the bottom of your browser window), and update your tour and then your profile with that color code. It will start with a # and look something like #1D507D (each color has a different alpha-numeric code). Note, if you already have active tours, you need to edit the color in each tour for it to go into effect, as each tour can be independently edited. Once you edit your profile, the color should automatically apply for all future tours.

To see a sample tour with these changes, click here or go to http://111anystreet.com

We thank you for your business in 2010, and we wish you a very happy new year, and a prosperous 2011!

Turbo-ized Virtual Tour

by chrisdrayer

November 29th, 2010

Photo credit: Robin Buckson / The Detroit News

“Faster” didn’t cut it. Neither did “new and improved”.

Recent improvements to our code and system have resulted in your tours loading 25-50% faster! Over Thanksgiving we were down for scheduled system maintenance. (We hope you were not inconvenienced).

Faster tours translate to greater effectiveness.

The new high speed floor plan virtual tour will further set your listings apart and ahead. We’ve done the work for you – check out your faster FloorPlanOnline tours to see for yourself, or check out the featured virtual tour of the week.

FloorPlanOnline – Simple, Effective and Affordable.

Have you used the fast and cool Embedded FloorPlanOnline Tour? Test drive one below. The Embedded Virtual Tour is FREE with every FPO Virtual Tour and can be placed in your blog.
Log in, and click Marketing materials then “Embedded Tour Beta”.

Categories Listing Tools, Real Estate Info, Technology, Tour Updates, What's New
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Move (Realtor.com) & MSN

by Kris Cone

November 2nd, 2010

Today, Realtor.com operator Move Inc. said it has renewed the content agreement with MSN that allows consumers to access Move’s property listings and related information via MSN Real Estate. Combined, Realtor.com and MSN Real Estate reach 18.6 million unique consumers each month, Move said, citing comScore data. Hitwise and comScore consistently rank both sites among the nation’s top 10 most visited real estate websites.

This is good new for FloorPlanOnline users.

First, if you are a Showcase member with Realtor.com, you get more distribution to MSN as part of this relationship. Second, if you are not a Showcase member, you can still reach these users by paying our $20 linking fee (which they charge us), and you can get your tour attached to your listing on Realtor.com and the other sites it powers. Either way, the tour shows up under the four main photos as the TOUR button. We have to link the tour for you. For those with few listings, it is likely more cost effective to not be a Showcase member. Call Realtor.com at 800-878-4166 to discuss options.

However. Now that we are also creating an exact video file of the tour’s virtual WalkThru video, this creates further reason to be a Showcase members. Showcase members can login to their Realtor.com control panel and upload the video to your listing. When you do this, it adds a VIDEO button below the Photos as well. You have to upload the video – there is no way for us to do this for you (we have asked Realtor.com several times now….). If you add a video, your listing gets further preferential search treatment.

All you need to do to download the video is login at Floorplanonline.com, go to Manage Orders, then click the VIEW link under Marketing Materials. If there is a Download Video button, click it and select the AVI option. Save on your computer, then login at Realtor.com and edit your listing and upload it! It should be ready within 40 minutes. If your listing does not have a video, go back to Manage orders, click on the Edit Tour link under Tour Editor, click on Edit Video, and then click the Save & Close button. This will queue the video up for production. It should show up in your account within 1 hr, but it could take longer, depending on the time of day and how many other videos are being processed.

Categories Listing Tools, Real Estate Info
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Professional Photos = Higher Sales Price

by Kris Cone

October 21st, 2010

A recent study by Seattle-based Redfin, an online brokerage, suggests that homes with higher quality photos sell for a higher sales price, and get more views, than homes with lower quality or no photos. According to their analysis using MLS pulled data, homes with professional photographs were found to be viewed, on average, 61 percent more online than others in that price range shot with a lower-end camera. The listings that used digital SLR cameras also commanded a 47 percent higher asking price per square foot, according to the Redfin analysis.

However, Digital SLR cameras were only found to increase the likelihood of a sale for listings $300,000 and above. In other words, buyers don’t seem to judge a house by its photos as much for homes under $300,000. Digital SLR cameras don’t appear to be too popular in the real estate market, even when shooting luxury listings. Eighty percent of the listing analyzed were shot with a point-and-shoot camera; only 15 percent of the listings used a digital SLR camera.

What’s most surprising, only about half of the listings in the $1 million-plus range were shot using a professional SLR camera, nearly split with low-end camera usage in that price range.

Click here to read the fill article on Realtor Magazine.

Categories Listing Tools, Real Estate Info
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New Landscape Tour Designs!

by Kris Cone

October 20th, 2010

We wanted to get your feedback on the new landscape oriented tour design we are working on. Please view the below sideshow, read the description, and then make your vote. Pleae note we are working on making some of these changes, like how the contact info, photo and logo show, on the current web-page oriented design.

Click on the sideshow for the full screen version

We appreciate your feedback – Please make your vote!

You can also leave feedback below.

Categories Real Estate Info, Tour Updates
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Expanded Service! 60% More Zipcodes!

by chrisdrayer

October 1st, 2010

FloorPlanOnline is excited to announce expanded FloorPlan Creation service in many major metropolitan markets across the United States.

Tampa, Nashville, New Orleans, Austin, Houston, Albuquerque, & San Diego homes, and many more places in between, can now be measured and floor plans created by our authorized FloorPlanOnline service providers. More than 20,000 new zip codes nationwide are included in our new “on site” FloorPlan service provider coverage area.

This means we will come to you and draw your floor plan. This material will be used to create a virtual tour complete with branded and unbranded tour links that can be posted to the MLS, Realtor.com, your website, Facebook, Twitter and now, even YouTube!

If you take your own photos (or use your own photographer) and would like to use them in conjunction with our floor plan service, you can order the Partial Service-FloorPlan Creation option. Our production team will integrate your pictures into the floor plan to create an Interactive FloorPlan Tour!

The FloorPlan rendering will show interior walls and room dimensions, as well as door & window locations. When the Virtual Tour is complete, home buyers can click the kitchen, and see the kitchen. The photos are embedded in the floor plan.

Plus, each Partial Service order includes our popular RoomPlanner feature, where prospective buyers can drag and drop furniture, beds, rugs and more onto the floor plan to experiment with room placement. Its a virtual staging tool, included at no additional cost as part of the premium Interactive FloorPlan Virtual Tour.

Coverage Map. The map below shows our total service area. We can always create a tour on a self service basis from any location around the world, but if you want us to visit the property, we’ve got you covered in the U.S.! The Red areas are Full Service Photo and FloorPlan coverage. The Green areas are Partial Service – FloorPlan Creation. Just add your photos to make an Interactive FloorPlan. And remember, you get the RoomPlanner included at no additional cost with every Interactive FloorPlan Tour, regardless of the service level!

Red-Full Service Photo & FloorPlan coverage | Green-Partial Service – FloorPlan Creation

You can also use our price calculator to see if Full or Partial Service is available for your listing, and get an estimate on the price.

Click Here for the Price Calculator

Or call us at 866-81-3816 option 2 for sales or option 3 for customer care, or use the form below to email us for more information. To see samples of our tours, please visit www.floorplanonline.com today!
[contact-form 1 "general"]

Categories Listing Tools, Real Estate Info, Service Provider, Technology, What's New
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YouTube & Realtor.com Video Innovation!

by Kris Cone

August 31st, 2010

The innovative Premium Virtual Tour company FloorPlanOnline has done it again.

FloorPlanOnline continues to offer additional features and functions to its tours and single property websites…without charge. Real Estate Agents may now check a simple box and an automated process creates and posts a YouTube video of the listing online into the FloorPlanOnline YouTube Channel or….your own (or company’s) channel! It’s very simple to use – just use our normal video editing tools and save your changes. Best of all, this enhanced tour distribution service is FREE. The video will be available for download under Marketing Materials generally within 1-2 hours after saving your changes (time varies based on the number of videos in the processing queue). In addition, we also create a video file that can be used to upload into your Realtor.com Showcase listing. For now, this is something you must do as Realtor.com has no automated process for tour companies to handle this job for you.

More adventurous Realtors may opt to select different music, type in captions for each photo and edit photos to create a more personalized YouTube video. In order to take advantage of the new YouTube & Realtor.com tool – FPO customers should log in and edit their linking profile by checking the box to include the linking to the FloorPlanOnline YouTube channel. Then just make sure it is selected on the order as you place create a new tour.

This new tool works on all new tours created as of Monday, Aug 30th 2010.
Click here to view an example video on YouTube or just play the sample below:

As with most enhancements and improvements to FPO tours, there is no additional fee for this feature. Other companies charge up to $20 or more, just to put a video on YouTube. On top of that, they charge up to $49 or more for the same virtual tour we price at $29. As long as your tour is active, including tours that have been renewed, you can create a video file and have the video uploaded to YouTube. Please read our FAQ below for more details on how to create a video file. Additionally, word from the FloorPlanOnline development department is that further options and YouTube related tools are being tested and tweaked for launch before the end of the year.

Why should you link the tour to YouTube, or Realtor.com? More online exposure. Most people are not going to YouTube to search for properties. In fact, according to the most recent NAR statistics, less than 1% of buyers in the survey sited YouTube as a source for online content. Realtor.com was one of the highest websites, however. However, putting the video on YouTube can help with search engine optimization…so your tour gets found, and you get it sold!

To learn more, just click on one of the FAQs below to read more details (click again to hide the detail).

Marketing Materials - Features: Your marketing materials, such as your flyer and your virtual tour links, can be found in the Marketing Materials area of our Order Management System. Follow these steps to get there.

- Log in to your account, then select "Manage Orders." Select the "View" link under the "Marketing Materials" column which brings you to the Marketing Materials menu. This menu is slightly different depending on what type of tour you ordered and if you have customized your online flyer.

Here is an overview of your options:

- VIEW TOUR. You can view your tour here.

- TOUR LINKS. Branded and Unbranded links appear here for approved tours. Use these links to add your tour to your MLS, to forward the tour to other agents and to the seller.

-EMBEDDABLE OBJECT. You can use this tool to put both the floor plan part of the tour and the video into your own website, a blog post, etc. Many company sites now allow you to paste in embeddable code. This is similar code to a YouTube video embed code. Check with your IT help desk to make sure it will work. You can configure the object to show a button to the full tour, change the button and text colors, etc. It is a great tool to make the tour a more seamless part of your own website or blog.

- SAVE TOUR to PC/BURN a CD. Select this option to save your tour to your PC or make a CD of the tour.

- FEATURED LISTING PAGE. Select this option if you want to see and/or copy the special website address we create for you that lists all of your active tour. You can also add a button to your website of emails to promote all of your FloorPlanOnline tours.

- DOWNLOAD PHOTOS. Select this option to save the photos to your computer. You have options to download a "zip" file of all photos, in different sizes, or download individual photos in different sizes. If you are downloading the zip file, how you do this depends on the type of operating system you are using (Windows vs Apple) and whether you have installed any third party file zipping program (like Winzip) or not. Normally, you click the button to download the zip file - after several seconds, a window should appear that has icons on it. Look for a menu option that says EXTRACT ALL FILES or something similar - click that, find a place to save your photos on your computer, such as My Pictures, and walk through the steps.

- DOWNLOAD FLYER. This option opens a smaller PDF of the flyer, which is the same version found on the tour when you click the Print button.

- DOWNLOAD HI RES FLYER. This option appears if you requested to save a High Resolution Flyer when you edited the online flyer in the Tour Editor function. Select this option if you want to save the High Resolution Flyer to your computer.

- DOWNLOAD FLOOR PLAN as PDF or JPEG. Select one of these options to save the floor plan to your computer.

- DOWNLOAD HI RES FLOOR PLAN. Select this option to save a high resolution floor plan to your computer. Individual files are provided for each level.

- VIEW INVOICE. Select this option to see a copy of your invoice for this tour. There is a date stamp for different charges and all charges associated with the tour are shown on the invoice. This can include tour renewals that happened in a different year.

That’s FloorPlanOnline – Simple, Effective and Affordable.

Categories Listing Tools, Real Estate Info, Real Estate News, Technology, Tour Updates, What's New
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3D FloorPlans & Model

by Kris Cone

July 16th, 2010

Check out this cool online 3D floor plan which can be printed to a real, physical 3D model. I can also include any furniture or other details you drag and drop onto the floor plan. It is still in development, but we hope to launch this in 2010.

Categories Real Estate Info
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Embed Your Own Custom Video & More

by Kris Cone

July 7th, 2010

I hope you all had a happy and safe 4th of July!

We wanted to let you know we just launched a few new enhancements/tour features you might like:

1. Custom Video. You can now embed your own custom video into the FloorPlanOnline virtual tour. You can even turn off our Virtual WalkThruTM Video and just display the video button for your embedded video! This is great for listings that have a custom produced video and you want to prominently display it under the Media section on the new FPO 2.0 tours. In order to use this, you will need the embed code provided by the company that created your custom video, or you can upload a video to YouTube and use the embed code YouTube provides. Select the largest size possible (like 960×745 pixels) so it fills the content area. Note: this feature is not available for the original FPO 1.0 tour format.

2. Property Documents. With the launch of the FPO 2.0 tour in May, we added the ability to upload property documents, such as disclosures or other reports, to your tours for display under More Info. There is now a way to delete a previously uploaded document. To upload a document, just select the button to upload the document (PDF or Word file) when you create the tour, or go to Manage Orders, then click on “edit” under Order Form and then scroll down to the property documents section. To delete a document, just select the “delete” link.

3. Tour Formats. We are working to add a new “Classic Virtual Tour” template that is more landscape oriented with the media buttons on the bottom….so it will be a little more like the original tour format but with larger content areas and more customizable (colors, features, additional resources), like the web page version of the FPO 2.0 tour. Look for this in the coming weeks. We have also heard from some of you that you would like to keep the original FPO 1.0 format for your tours. We can certainly accommodate this request. Right now, there is no way for you to select this option when you create a tour (but it will be there in the future). For now, you can email us or call us and we can add a note to your account to have your tours produced in the original format. Note: some items, such as the Feature list, additional resources, and property documents are not available on the original tour format.

4. Video File/YouTube. Many of you have expressed the desire to have the WalkThruTM Video uploaded to YouTube, as well as additional tour distribution options. These things ranked high on the recent survey as well. I am pleased to announce we are actively working the conversion of the video to a format that is acceptable for upload to YouTube, so this should be ready within 1 to 2 months after some testing and purchase of additional software. It will include the ability to download the video file under Marketing Materials for your use as well. Once this is completed we will work to add more tour distribution options, such as Zillow, Trulia, etc.

We have a long list of other enhancements coming in the next 6 months. Once some of these projects get closer I will provide a more detailed update. We really value your business and your feedback to help FloorPlanOnline be the best property tour out there. Please feel free to email me directly with any comments, questions, testimonies or concerns.

Best Regards,
Kris Cone
email: kris@floorplanonline.com kris@floorplanonline.com

Categories Real Estate Info, Tour Updates
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FloorPlanOnline Around the Nation

by chrisdrayer

June 7th, 2010

The New FloorPlanOnline FPO 2.0 Product launch has generated interest from Jacksonville to Chicago, From Tech Forums to Green Living Groups! Here are some of the most recent News Articles and blogs that talk about FloorPlanOnline Real Estate Marketing.
Thanks to these respected publications for helping share the FloorPlan Online growth and development story.