In the short-term, schools have been asking for a way to quickly create an online tour to replace their in-person tours. And for the long-term, they’re requesting quotes for a more comprehensive virtual tour solution.

In response to these requests, we’ve created an inexpensive, fast way to help you:

1. Organize, and present your school’s existing videos, photos, maps and other content in one centralized virtual campus experience, and
2. Create the framework for a more complete virtual tour in the future (when your campus is open again, and at a time when your team is comfortable having us on campus to photograph it)

So how does it work?

Step 1: Collect any content that showcases the points of interest on your campus 

• Video clips & Photos — search your existing content library. Or, if your campus is still accessible, go shoot new photos and videos of key locations on campus that you would normally take people on an in-person visit.
• Campus maps — This could be a campus rendering, illustrated map or aerial photo. Preferably, one that does not have markings (numbers, text, etc.) on it. If you don’t have one, we can help create a rudimentary one for you.

Step 2: Organize the content

• Name each point of interest as you would normally refer to it
• Identify and mark the locations of each point of interest on the map
• Create a digital folder for each point of interest
• Save all the photos into the appropriate folder
• Upload the video clips to YouTube or Vimeo

Step 3:  Send your content and branding materials to Circlescapes

• Logo (in EPS, SVG or Adobe Illustrator format, of possible)
• Colors (send up to 3 colors you’d like to use)
• Fonts
• All photos, maps and video clip links
• Pick a page on your website that you’d like people to link to when the click on a “learn more” button

Step 4: Circlescapes creates your virtual campus experience.

Step 5:  Promote your virtual campus experience

• Add links to your main landing page, pop-up alerts, and drop-down menus
• Schedule online webinars each week (i.e. – Mondays and Wednesdays at 3pm) for your admissions team to guide potential students through the virtual campus experience online.
• Promote the webinars and virtual campus experience on social media and on school search websites

How long does it take?

5-7 days.  Once we have all your content, logos, maps, colors and fonts, we can create and deliver your virtual campus experience quickly. It’s all housed on your web servers, so there’s no ongoing hosting costs or hassles.

What does it cost?

Without a future virtual tour

$2000 — Virtual campus experience with up to 10 map locations

Optional items

• $100 each — Additional map locations
• $1500 — 2D/Flat campus map rendering

$1500 — Virtual campus experience with up to 10 map locations

Optional items

• $50 each — Additional map locations
• $1000 — 2D/Flat campus map rendering

We will send you an authorization for a complete 10-spin premium virtual tour to get the ball rolling. The project cost indicated will be $8,000 + travel expenses to be determined in the future.  The $8,000 equates to:

• $1500 —  temporary tour
• $3,000 — 10 spins at $300 each
• $3,500 — Premium design package

When the time comes to shoot your future virtual tour, we will work with you to revise the project estimate to reflect the actual work and deliverables. 25% deposit will be due upon contract execution.

It’s difficult to translate that in-person experience to a flat webpage with simple text and photos. That’s why 360° virtual tours are perfect for schools!

An interactive 360° virtual campus tour enables you to tell your story to students who live far away and can’t take an in-person tour right away (or ever) before making a decision. The fully-spherical panoramas take students inside your classrooms, dorm rooms, sports facilities, performance areas and campus hotspots with the ability to look up, down and all the way around to get a complete view of the space — almost like they were there in person. Plus, you can add video clips, sideshows, text descriptions, voice-overs, and other interactive elements to make the experience even more informative and fun.

Your school’s campus is a special, beautiful place.
Make it shine online.

Point-of-interest tours (POI) vs. walkable tours

Google type virtual tours are “walkable,” meaning the photographer takes a new 360° photo every 15-20 feet, so you can move down a hallway, or “walk” across campus. There are a number of drawbacks to this approach:

1. At 15-feet apart, many panoramas are essentially the same thing, so you may spend a lot of time clicking on the same sidewalk to get to the next point of interest.
2. With so many panoramas to take, the photographer can’t take time to:
   • Stage each scene so it looks crisp, clear and amazing
   • Strategically place people around the camera to highlight the campus energy
   • Shoot multiple exposures to ensure you can see both inside the rooms, and out the windows
   • Photoshop any imperfections, remove the tripod, and color-correct the images in post-processing
3. Most walkable interfaces are template-based or tied to the Google servers, so you cannot customize the look and feel of the experience to your brand identity.
4. Since all the panoramas are connected in a spider-web fashion, it’s much harder to make changes to your virtual tour if you build a new building or renovate an existing one.
5. Your audience may accidentally click in the wrong spot and get lost while moving from point A to point B.

Circlescapes tours are point-of-interest based, so we focus on highlighting only the spaces you think are most beneficial to your marketing and admissions efforts. We work with you to stage each scene, arranging people around the camera, and hiding clutter to make each panorama look its best.

We then combine all the panoramas into an easy-to-use, customized interface that is specific to your brand identity and needs. For navigation between panoramas, you can use a campus map, thumbnail images, a drop-down list, or a combination of them. Your online visitors will only see and experience what you want them to see.

This type of virtual tour is compelling because:

1. Your website is usually the first touchpoint for prospective students and their families—your virtual tour helps your school stand out
2. You can visually highlight, and quickly access specific programs like the performance arts, athletics or science
3. Including students and staff in the panoramas highlights the energy of your campus
4. Compelling interactive content like videos, slideshows, audio and text makes your tour a dynamic marketing piece
5. Unlike your printed collateral, your virtual tour can be easily and inexpensively updated and can “grow” over time
6. It is a perfect collateral piece to travel with your enrollment recruiters—it displays on mobile devices, and is an engaging way to introduce your campus to potential students

Why choose Circlescapes?

• Circlescapes has photographed over 400 venues in 33 states and abroad and has been creating virtual tours for over 10 years
• Affordable, one-time cost. No monthly or annual fees.
• It only takes 2-3 weeks to deliver your virtual tour after we finish the photography.
• Custom-designed interfaces that will reflect your school’s brand—not a template
• Amazing photography
  • Big, bold, crisp 360° images
  • High dynamic range technique (HDR photography— so you can see both inside the room and the view out the window as your real eye would see it)
  • Staged scenes — with or without people— so your campus will have an appealing energy
  • Detailed post processing to ensure each panorama looks its best (color correction, tripod removal, sharp and detailed, using right combination of people, etc.)
• Built-in analytics, request-for-information forms, and call to action buttons so your tour can generate leads
• The ability for you to edit multiple components in-house — like image slideshows, videos and text
• We can create an affordable VR app for your school, downloadable from Google Play or Apple App store (app vs viewing VR in a web browser is a more functional and smoother viewing experience)
• We can design and procure custom-branded VR  headsets so you can add this really fun swag to your marketing mix

How much does it cost?

A Circlescapes virtual tour is more affordable than you may think. We can fit almost any budget with a “starter” tour as low as $3500, a more comprehensive tour averaging around $9000 or a campus tour + a VR experience for under $20,000.

And since you host the tour with your other website files, there are no recurring fees.

How Long does it take?

We’ll deliver your virtual tour about 2-3 weeks after we finish with the photography.

What’s the next step?

Schedule a demo and contact us to get a quote – you just let us know how many panoramas you need, and what types of interactive elements you’d like in your virtual campus tour. We’ll send you a price quote, then pick a photography date.

Since Circlescapes virtual tours are best viewed in a dedicated browser tab, we don’t actually need to touch your primary website at all. All you need to do is add a link (or links) to your website to launch the virtual tour in a new window.

Where you place those links is up to you. Is it more relevant to the “Student Life” section? Would it fit in under “About Us?” How about a big button on your home page so it is sure to be seen? Well, there are no right answers so I want to share with you what some other schools are doing and where we see the best returns.

Most schools feature a revolving banner on their home page. This is a great way to showcase the virtual tour when it is newly launched. You could take a screen shot of the tour and add that as the visual, or use another image of your campus with a link that says: “Check out our new 360° virtual campus tour!”

Many schools have highly interactive home pages with lots of great information as you scroll down the page. This is a good opportunity to feature the tour on your “Home” page like Pennington and the Oregon Episcopal School:

We recommend that you have more than one path to get to the virtual tour. For example Oregon Episcopal School also has a button on their top nav bar that is accessible from anywhere on the website:

A natural place to put a campus virtual tour is on your “Admissions” page or in that section of your site. Some examples of this are The McCallie School, Lake Forest Academy and Brewster Academy.

Brewster has their tour available in a few places in the Admissions section. It is a button on their “Your Campus Visit” page.

And it is a ”Helpful Link” on the “International Student Programs” page.

You might have a special page dedicated to your campus. That is also great spot to add a text link or button to your virtual campus tour, like Chadwick International:

Your “About Us” page or section is one frequently visited by prospective families, students and faculty to get introductory information about your school. This is also a great place for a link or button. An example of this is Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn:

Even if your tour is featured as a button on your home page or in various other subsections, it is good to have a link in your Quicklinks drop down list, on your site map, and available in search:

You can also feature the panoramas from your tour on Google Maps, like in the following example of Brewster Academy. This is what you will see when the user searches your school’s name:

And when “See photos” is clicked, a tray of 360° photos pulls up:

You can also post individual panoramas on Facebook or deep link to relevant panoramas. For example, you may only want to show 360° images of your dorm rooms on your “Residential Life” page or show off your new Aquatics Center on your “Athletics” page.

To recap, here are some recommendations for where to feature your tour and remember, multiple locations is best!

• Home page
• About us
• Admissions
• Campus
• Residential Life
• Facility Rentals
• Visit Us
• International Students
• Google Maps
• Facebook

Let us know if you have other ideas for your tour or if you would like more information on creating an interactive campus tour for your school: Circlescapes Virtual Tours (information@circlescapes.com).