Over the summer we had a project to see how we could improve listing information for office space. We wanted to help those in need of office space have an easier job of deciding which would be best for their needs. We think we have done it with our 360° Interactive office space virtual tours!
When you go to almost any listing website now, you will see pretty much the same information on available office space. They include the same basic data and photographs on almost every site. We thought we might improve on the visual aspect of listings by producing 360° interactive panoramic office space virtual tours. Since our HQ is here, we started in the Seattle office space market. We included both Seattle, the Bellevue Eastside office market, Bothell and Mountlake Terrace with executive suite and cowork spaces. In all, we have created 32 office space virtual tours which includes a significant percentage of the executive suite and cowork space option in the area.
What’s in a virtual tour?
A virtual tour is an online media presentation that represents a real location in the most realistic form possible. There are many forms of online media that represents a location. We see photo slideshows and videos being deemed “virtual tours” but those types of media are not close to being able to represent a realistic location as well as an interactive 360° panoramic based tour. A 360° panoramic office space virtual tour gives the viewer a choice in what to look at in the given location in crystal clear high definition. It is almost like you are there touring the space. The freedom to interact makes the tour a realistic and engaging site selection tool.
Virtual tours consist of three basic processes:
- Photographing the area or areas to be included in the virtual tour.
- Stitching me photographs of specific areas together to create a 360° panorama photograph.
- Creating a virtual tour by specifying hot-spots within the panoramas. These will lead to other panoramas or multimedia providing the viewer with the ability to move around the property
What we did was to visit 32 locations in the Seattle and Bellevue office markets. We took a series of photographs as if we were there to tour the space. What we ended up with was the ability for visitors to interactively visit these locations, as if they were there, from the comfort of their computers or mobile devices. Each of the virtual tours include between 6 and 12 scenes within each of the offices. What we wanted to accomplish was to allow visitors to get the “flavor” of the office space they may be interested in; allowing them to save the time and effort involved in visiting alternatives that may not be suitable. This way visitors can shortlist their options much easier and save a significant amount of time touring alternatives.
Here is one of the ones we completed. The Holyoke Building is a 5 story historic office building in Downtown Seattle occupied by a cowork office space provider.
[panoembed]/VirtualTours/Seattle/Holyoke/index.html[/panoembed]
Click Here to view in full screen (recommended)
Over the coming weeks, we will be blogging about the office space virtual tours we have completed, providing more details about the space and how we went about the process of creating the tours.
You can find the office space virtual tours on our local web pages. They are identified with the 360° badge shown below:
Where to find OfficeFinder’s 360° Interactive Office Space Virtual Tours
You can find our office space virtual tours on the following Local pages. They will be located near the top of the listing for office space on the page.
Let us know what you think.