by Kris Cone | Oct 11, 2015 | Real Estate Info
View all of our help videos, including a detailed drawing tutorial
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Introducing our brand new, exclusive 3D FloorPlan tool.
Now, every FloorPlan Tour has a 3D floor plan!
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3D Top View
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3D First Person
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2D Layout
The new 3D FloorPlan view provides prospective buyers with a unique, adjustable view of the property. Users can select from the top “doll house” that gives a top down perspective, or go inside with the First Person view. Just point and click or use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move around the property.
Every new tour includes a 3D FloorPlan view. The basic version is included at no additional cost as well! We do offer an Enhanced 3D FloorPlan that includes flooring and wall color matching (as much as possible), kitchen and bath layout and more.
Click here for an example of an Enhanced 3D FloorPlan or Click here to read more.
Future enhancements will be coming, including mobile views and a brand new RoomPlanner! Stay tuned…
by Kris Cone | Jul 23, 2015 | Listing Tools, Technology, What's New
I just saw this blog post on Linkedin, and thought it was an interesting, and applicable read, to what we are doing with helping to market real estate. It basically says a human has an attention span of 8 seconds, so if you can’t capture the user within that timeframe, they move on. You can read the full post here.
The post says to follow these rules for content marketing some parts copied verbatim):
1. Capture the attention quickly. In our case – the tour has to load quickly to display the content.
2. Content needs to be engaging (e.g. shareable) in the ecosystem it lives in. Eg We focus on floorplan content, something that buyers want to see as it shows how their family can live in a home.
3. Content needs to be authentic. For FPO, each house is different and unique.
4. Employees are your best ambassadors: with FPO, we run an employee-owned company and strive to provide helpful, US-based customer service.
5. It’s a marriage, not a one night stand. If your brand starts producing content for social media, its a commitment to your audience, not an experiment.
I relate this 8 second stat to tours out there today. Matterport has received a lot of press in the last year….yet from a user perspective, it can take 20 to 30 seconds, or more, for it to load. And then, the user has to point and click, spending valuable time, just to screen a property. Don’t get me wrong, it is cool technology, but is it the right technology to use as THE base marketing tool? I say no. Per independent research, buyers want to see #1 – Big Photos and #2 – FloorPlans. Videos, 360s, and everything else are ancillary. That is why we created our Full Screen HD Tour…to showcase a property with big large content and to let people quickly screen properties, to then take the next step.
Look for more to come in the next half of 2015!
Cheers
Kris Cone, CEO/Co-Founder
by Kris Cone | Jul 22, 2015 | Listing Tools, What's New
Great news for non-Showcase agents linking tours to Realtor.com
As of July 1, 2015, linking the FloorPlanOnline virtual tour to Realtor.com is now completely Free! In the past, Realtor.com charged us a fee to link non-Showcase tours to Realtor.com, and we therefore passed on this cost by charging $25 to link to Realtor.com. Going forward, linking to Realtor.com, whether you are a Showcase member with them or not, is free!
We made this change in our pricing system a little after the first of the month, and we did attempt to refund any charges for non-Showcase linking made from July 1 to July 7th. If you find a charge for Realtor.com linking in July that we missed, just shoot us an email at support@floorplanonline.com and we will issue a credit.
Behind Zillow/Trulia, Realtor.com is the 3rd most vistited real estate website, so it benefits you to link the tour. In additon, if you are a Showcase member only because of the tour linking savings (it was free), you might be able to save some bucks now with the nonShowcase membership.
How to link your tours to Realtor.com
It is easy, you just need to do a few things:
1) Update your linking profile to make sure Realtor.com selected.
To add Realtor.com, login, go to Edit Profile and click the Edit Tour Linking & Distribution button towards the top. Then just make sure Realtor.com is checked. Go to the bottom and save.
Then select the box for Realtor.com
2) Add Realtor.com to older tours.
Go to Manage Tours, then select the Edit Details link (it is a blue text link) under the Tour Details column, scroll to the bottom and make sure Realtor.com is selected for that particular listing (and that we have the valid MLS number) and then save.
3) Manually link to Realtor.com
Go back to Manage Tours an on the far right under Tour Actions, select See Tour Linking and hit the relink option to manually link the tour to Realtor.com.
You can also send us an email to support@floorplanonline.com with a request to set this up and relink for you. Note if you have a lot of tours, it might take a few days for us to complete this task.
For new tours, if we have the MLS number at the time you Approve & Publish the tour, the virtual tour will get added to Realtor.com within a few minutes automatically. It shows both on the small thumbnail view as well as on the lower right of the main photo slider. Granted…it is not that visible, but at least it is there on the listing!
Call2Action Photo
As a reminder, you can get more people clicking on the virtual tour by uploading the unbranded version of the Call2Action photo into your MLS photo gallery, which then will make its way to Realtor.com, Zillow and other sites to call out to the user to click on the virtual tour link. Click here to read more on the Call2Action Photo.
Note for the Northwest MLS
Some MLS systems (namely the NWMLS in the Seattle area) make you jump through some hoops to get your listings pulled into Realtor.com in the first place. If your listings are not on Realtor.com, we can’t link the tour there. So you need to make sure Realtor.com pulls your listings in from the MLS first.
What you need to do:
The following forms need to be completed and faxed back to MOVE® at 480-556-4508.
1) REALTOR.com® Designated (BDCP) – Broker Data Content Provider Agreement
2) NWMLS Form 110 – Data License Agreement – This needs to be downloaded directly from the NWMLS website
3) Realtor.com NWMLS Broker Website Agreement
You can also contact Realtor.com directly at
REALTOR.com® Customer Care: 800-878-4166
E-mail: CustomerCare@REALTOR.com
by Kris Cone | Jul 1, 2015 | Real Estate Info
Introducing our own version of a time machine – Video History!
We recently added an ability to look back and use prior saved versions of your Photo/Video timelines!
How it Works
Once you have made at least one save to your video, there will be a History button. Click it and you will see prior versions of the video. So, if you made changes or something happened to your video, and you want to revert back to a prior sequence, just select one of the other saves. It will load, and then hit Save & Close.
That’s it! Enjoy.
by Kris Cone | Jul 1, 2015 | Real Estate Info
Introducing a major enhancement to the Custom Video embed option for the Full Screen HD tour. Now, you can embed up to 4 custom videos!
Previously, you could embed one custom video…but what about the area tour video, or the aerial video, or maybe even a custom virtual tour you want to add to your main FloorPlanOnline tour? Well now you can embed up to 4 videos or other tours if you are using the Full Screen HD Tour viewer! Simply go to Edit Details for any listing (select the Full Screen tour at the top if you want to use the custom video updates) and paste the embed code from any video into the custom video fields. The main video is featured larger on the page, and 3 other videos are displayed below. The user can then use the full screen button to pop the video in full screen, if desired.
You have an option to also show on the unbranded tour version as well….but remember if any video has your branding or contact info, do not show it on the unbranded version. Also, this should work on the iPad version, but it is not supported for the smartphone version at this time.
You can see an example
here where we embedded some random videos, as well as a Matterport tour.
by Kris Cone | Jun 9, 2015 | Real Estate Info, What's New
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