12 Reasons You Should Give Virtual Tours Some Serious Thought

Here at EyeSpy360™, we've heard various reasons as to why estate agents don't think they need virtual tours of their properties. But they are innovative and important tools that really should be given some serious thought. So here are 12 answers we have heard agents say, as to why they think they don't need virtual tours, followed by our reasoning as to why they definitely do!

1. "They're just gimmicks! No one buys a house from looking at a Virtual Tour! I don't see how I would benefit."

We completely agree with the fact that somebody wouldn't buy a house after having just looked at a virtual tour. In fact, if they were able to do this then they would have to be either extremely wealthy or not very picky at all!

Our virtual tour platform has been specifically designed to allow you to qualify your viewings first, before you go and meet your client.

So you will still meet your clients in the same way, but at the properties that you know have already appealed to them. This will save you and your clients time and allow you to hone in on qualified viewings. What we always say is:

"Don't change what you do, change how you do it!”

Think about it, would you honestly still go to a physical viewing if you knew it was going to be a total waste of time?

2. “We already do Virtual Tours.”

Who do you use? 

The reason I ask this, is because we are the most affordable platform on the market and, not to blow our own trumpet, but we’re also the simplest to use. Our tours are premium and at a fraction of the cost of most providers.

3. “We’ve tried Virtual Tours, but they don't work for us.”

Why didn’t they work for you?

This could depend on how you tried. Our platform is built on patent pending, cutting edge technology, that not only allows you to create virtual tours in 15 minutes, but also allows you to create pre-recordings of these walkthroughs.

You can also utilise EyeSpyLIVE™, joining your customers in a live video chat, where all parties can see and talk to each other during the virtual tour. It’s exactly like a property viewing in person, but without actually having to leave the house or office. Imagine FaceTime or Skype embedded inside of a virtual tour.

What’s more, you can access your tour analytics, to look at the number of views your tours are getting. You’re able to see where the views are coming from, including location, date visited and from which website. You can even add rich content, including Google Street View, 360 videos and images via embedded labels within the tours, to ensure that your viewers have all the information that they need in one place.

Also, in terms of international clients, our users say that they find our platform brilliant, as it saves these overseas clients huge amounts of time, with higher levels of satisfaction, as virtual tours offer a much better representation of the property.

4. “We want people to call us, but by having a virtual tour of a property, a client can see around the whole house, and may not call if they don't like that particular property. Then we lose a lead!?”

Only you know what is best for your business, and EyeSpy360™ should be used as an extra layer of highly affordable marketing. So like most marketing, you can choose what to send and to whom.

Therefore, why not publish a shorter, “teaser” virtual tour, to gain the lead. Then supply the full version when it is a suitable time to do so.

Alternatively, don’t advertise the tour at all, simply gain the lead as normal and then decide whether it is to your advantage to send them a virtual tour once you have engaged with them!

Our clients who add virtual tours to their listings say that they would prefer to do one qualified viewing over three speculative ones.

5. “Who will take the 360 shots? We only use our photographers, we don't do them ourselves.”

That is certainly not a problem. 

Simply supply your photographers with the camera and ask them to take the 360 shots whilst they are producing your other photos/floor plans/EPCs, etc. 

The camera only needs to be put in the middle of the room on a tripod and the shot can be taken within 5 seconds!

6. “We just don't have the time to create virtual tours.”

Most clients happily create tours within 10-15 minutes, but if you would prefer not to spend any time on this, again this is no problem at all. 

We have a service where, once you've taken your 360 photos, you can send them to us along with a floor plan and we will create the virtual tours for you. (This service costs £20 per virtual tour, plus VAT)

7. “Our vendors need to get as many people as possible through the front door, so that we can justify our fees.”

We have over 10,000 clients across 52 countries using our software. They utilise the reports available within EyeSpy360™, to provide feedback to their clients on how many people have actually viewed a virtual tour of their property and where they have come from. Most vendors regard this as advantageous, as it avoids unnecessary viewings, which normally only serve to disrupt vendors. 

Additionally, more and more of our clients are saying that there is increasing pressure to reduce fees in the current climate, and they are utilising virtual tours and complementary features such as EyeSpyLIVE™ and EyeSpyPLAY™ to offer an optional, cheaper pricing tier around this method of selling.

The reality is that the majority of vendors don’t in fact like people coming around all the time and find virtual tours not only a forward way of thinking for estate agents, but also a brilliant way to qualify viewings.

8. “Some vendors won't like the idea of strangers looking around their house online.”

Again, you could refrain from putting the virtual tour online and just provide a short tour, with only 360 images of the front and rear garden, or perhaps one or two rooms inside. This way, you can use the virtual tour as a teaser and then send the full tour to qualified buyers, in order to gain more in-person viewings.

9. “We can’t justify more cost right now.”

Our platform is extremely affordable (circa £3 per property, per month) and our clients say (as proved by their testimonials) that the small cost of the platform is easily offset by the time and cost savings they make.

Additionally, in many cases it actually helps them win instructions over more sluggish and traditional estate agents. This offsets the nominal costs of our platform instantly.

10. “Some of our properties are awful and we don't want to show them in full 360.”

If the property is that bad and you feel that you will be able to sell it better in person, then this is fair enough. Don't forget that you don't have to use virtual tours for all of your properties. However, you still have to take your clients to this property, so it's essentially the same thing. 

What you could do though, is create a pre-recorded virtual tour, so that you can say everything you would say in person, or even use our live virtual tour video-chat based system, EyeSpyLIVE™ for the same reasons. This way, clients are viewing the property with your input. 

11. “I don’t know how to take a good 360 photo.”

You don’t need to! The 360 camera does pretty much everything for you and they are surprisingly easy to use.

We recommend the Ricoh Theta cameras, as they are simple and affordable. They take good quality images, which upload easily into our system.

12. “Why should I use you over your competition?”

• Fairer pricing.

• Incredible testimonials.

• More features, many of which are world-firsts.

• Customer service - most competitors don’t even have phone numbers!

• Much more user-friendly. We have a patent pending platform.

• Game-changing features in our product pipeline.

• Lots of our clients have left competitors to come over to EyeSpy360™, mainly because it is cheaper and easier to use.