Secure Tours and your Branding on 95% of the internet is here

by Kris Cone | Nov 30, 2018 | Listing Tools, Real Estate Info, Technology

Secure Tours & Brandkeeper.

We have two great updates regarding our virtual tours that were released in the last week regarding SSL and Brandkeepr.  These two updates go hand in hand with each other:

1. SSL Secure Tours.  Now, all tours are served using the SSL protocol, meaning they are served encrypted from end to end and the tour url uses https.  While there really isn’t any personal info on the tour that required the switch, to get our Brandkeepr functionality to work on most of the top real estate search sites, we had to update our tours because most of those sites are using https, so to get our Brandkeepr magic to work, our tours also have to be SSL secured. Your company site, and your personal website may also use SSL, so when properly configured, we can automatically convert the unbranded tour to the branded version on about 95% of the top 10 sites, and more! Plus, it makes embedding a tour, like the example below, work if your own site or blog is secure.
2. New Tour Viewer. We released a new Tour Viewer design in addition to the Story format.  So if you like the more classic tour look that has your logo persistent and buttons for content items, the new Tour Viewer is for you.  All it takes is selecting the option and then selecting your start content, including a new “Dashboard” view (read more on that below). This new viewer, combined with the secure protocol change, means you can now embed our tour easily on your own website or a blog post using simple embed code, just like this example.  It is a full functioning tour, embedded into your own website.

Try this embedded tour – all content works, including on any mobile device.  Just start clicking!

Display Options for the Virtual Tour.

In order to embed a tour into a website page, all you need to use is our sample code like this (which is also shown on the Tour Links page within the marketing center for each tour):

Just change the tour ID (184056 in this example) to your tour ID and this code should work on most sites.  You can also change the width and height size, in pixels, which will set the maximum display (it is responsive so it will shrink on smaller devices).  If you would like to start with a particular content view, you can either change to the desired view under Edit Details, Content Display Options (see screen shot below), or you can click on the desired content button on the tour itself and then copy and paste the URL that has the content at the end.  For example, to start with the Floor Plan view, just use this as the embed url: https://www.floorplanonline.com/tour/184056/b/floorplan or to start with the video, use https://www.floorplanonline.com/tour/184056/b/walkthru.  These options give you ultimate flexibility on displaying your tour.

Note…you can also use both the Story or the Tour Viewer links on the same listing at the same time.  The default is what you set on Manage Tours, under the Tour Frame Type section at the very top, but both links work to display the tour in a specific format, as follows:

The Tour View – https://www.floorplanonline.com/tour/184056/  
The Story View – https://www.floorplanonline.com/story/184056/

The normal tour link, like https://www.floorplanonline.com/184056/ will open up the default selected view but these specific links override that, if you want to use them for a specific reason (like using the Story for MLS and distribution but using the Tour for embedding on your blog). Again, it provides extreme flexibility.

Note: our existing embedded tour content option on the Marketing Center is still coded for the old format, so please use the instructions here for embedding the new tour viewer on your website. An update will come in the future for the legacy option to provide even more flexibility, so if you only wanted to show the floor plan and the video on the embedded version, you could without disturbing the main virtual tour view.

How to configure Brandkeepr^TM for maximum exposure.  

On sites like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Homes.com and Redfin, we can now recognize the user is coming from one of these sites when they click on the virtual tour, and we therefore automatically convert the unbranded tour pulled in from the MLS to the branded version, so YOUR brand shows on 95.5% of the top 10 real estate oriented websites.  The virtual tour is the ONLY content item for your listing that can lead people back to you on any number of sites.  Leverage this bread crumb trail!  It gives you more visibility that gets you more leads for free, just by people seeing the virtual tour on these sites!  We can also do this for your company website, your personal website or blog or any other site YOU put into the Brandkeepr^TM configuration.

To configure and edit your Brandkeepr^TM profile, go to Edit Profile and then elect the Edit My Brandkeepr profile.  From this page you can see what sites we automatically convert to the branded link, and you can add your own sites (we add your profile site by default), or turn off some if you do not want it branded for some reason.  This tool gives you lots of flexibility.  Note: do not put in your competitor websites as you could run afoul of the IDX rules that generally prohibit agent branding on content distributed from the MLS. It is ok on these major search portals, just don’t do it on your competitor’s websites…

The key to making all of this work is make sure to use the https link when you post the virtual tour. If you already have a tour linked, just change it in the mls – add the “s” at the end and it should get updated to other sites.  That is it!  going forward the links we provide you already has https in the link.

One final note.  Leverage the Call2Action photo to also get more people to visit the virtual tour.  Zillow does a good job of hiding the link below the fold (the user has to scroll), so get them to go to the tour that has all of this other great content, including floor plans, video, and more.  Learn more on Call2Action here.