360 Virtual Tour – Care Home 360

Virtual Tours: Are They Here To Stay Beyond Covid?

Beckie — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 12:36:24 +0000

Virtual Tours: Are They Here To Stay Beyond Covid?

During the Covid-19 pandemic – and especially during its lockdowns – care home owners needed to find a way to keep bed occupancy rates high while balancing the health needs of residents and staff. Making any decision about long term care is a tough one at the best of times and usually involves the care seeker making at least one visit to any, or all, of the care homes on their shortlist. How do you show potential clients around a care home during a lockdown? This is where 360 virtual tours proved an invaluable tool. They gave care home owners the opportunity to showcase their care home while keeping residents safe. But will virtual tours become a standard in the care home industry, are they here to stay?

Are virtual tours still popular after the pandemic?

The short answer is, yes. Virtual tours continue to be one of the fast growing sales and marketing tools in the care sector. Although the reasons why they continue to be popular are not quite the same as they were during the height of the pandemic. During lockdown virtual tours were a necessity, a solution to a real problem. Now they’ve become an essential part of marketing for many care homes, like having a website. There are a couple of reasons why this is. Virtual tours are incredibly useful for care seekers because they help to make a difficult decision a bit easier. They have value, they have worth. So much so that care seekers have quickly got used to them and are increasingly expecting to see them when they visit a care home website. As for care home owners, they’ve been able to measure their business value, not only in terms of better conversion and bed occupancy rates, but also in increased keyword rankings and web traffic, too. Virtual tours are here to stay because they’re a hit with care seekers and care home owners.

Why are virtual tours popular care home businesses?

There are a number of marketing reasons and practical ones, too.

Showcase your care home at its very best

Consumers are all pretty internet savvy nowadays, they’re used to making major purchasing decisions online and are always looking for better, more engaging online experiences from brands. A really good quality 360 virtual tour provides care seekers with a unique, online experience of your care home at its very best. They give you an element of control too, giving you the ability to ‘guide’ them toward key features such as communal areas, gardens and your best bedrooms.

Give some users guided virtual tours

While some care seekers will be happy to show themselves around any virtual tour, there are others who might need a helping hand. It might be a relatively unknown feature, but it’s really easy to take a care seeker on a guided virtual tour while talking to them in a video call. Indeed, it’s worth making sure that visitors to your virtual tour page are aware of this, as it’s a great opportunity to talk to potential clients and amplify the key features and benefits of your care home.

Short capture time means minimum disruption to your care home

You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you find out that actually, the shoot for a virtual tour can be done in just two hours. Once the raw footage has been captured, all the magic happens in post-production, so the process is a really simple one for care home owners.

Really easy to add to your website

Virtual tours will usually be hosted for you on specialist servers that can deal with their complexity and traffic demands. It’s usually just as simple as embedding a line or two of code into a page on your website.

Easy to add new sections and update

It’s a bit of a misconception that you’ll have to commission a new virtual tour if you make significant changes to your care home. Virtual tours can be expanded, edited with whole new sections added, if you wish. You can also embed videos, photos and other content within them too.

Help improve your keyword and rankings and increase traffic

Imagine being faced with a number of similar care homes displayed on a Google search results page, the reality is that you’re more likely to want to click-through to the one that says ‘take our virtual tour’ than the one that doesn’t. That’s how they can help increase traffic to your website. And virtual tours will help you to improve dwell time on your website, too. Which is another positive metric that will help improve keyword rankings. Are you ready to book your virtual tour for your care home?

We’re highly experienced at producing 360 virtual tours within the care sector and deliver a comprehensive offering.

We take time to ensure that all our virtual tours are accessible and can be used by real people with little, or even no, digital experience.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or want to book a shoot for your virtual tour.

5 Reasons Why Your Care Home Needs a Virtual Tour

Beckie — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:36:35 +0000

5 Reasons Why Your Care Home Needs a Virtual Tour

It’s hard to forget just how challenging it was to keep care home residents safe during the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Care home owners had to find innovative ways to balance the welfare of residents while keeping occupancy rates stable and their businesses going.

How do you show a potential new resident around your care home without them actually being there?

360 virtual tours helped to solve this problem, but why do they continue to be the fastest-growing sales and marketing tool in the sector?

Here we take a look at why it’s a good idea to invest in virtual tours for all your nursing homes.

Reason 1

Care seekers now expect a virtual tour when they visit your website

Virtual tours have made such an impact over the last few years that care seekers have become accustomed to being able to view a care home when they visit a website.

It can be a very time-consuming process to arrange time slots and visit all the care homes that might be suitable.

And a frustrating one, if, after a long journey, the care home doesn’t make a positive impression.

Giving people the opportunity to take a tour of your care home on your website means you will be more likely to make it onto their final shortlist.

Reason 2

Don’t lose out to your competitors

Whether it’s a car, house or a care home, UK consumers are more confident making major purchasing decisions online than ever before.

While this was born out of necessity during COVID-19 lockdowns, the trend continues.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to sell online.

As online consumer confidence has grown so too have expectations for better, more helpful digital experiences.

And the competition for clicks and people’s time online is such that if you don’t meet or exceed these expectations it’s really easy to lose out to a competitor who does.

Simply put, 360 virtual tours have become the norm in the care home sector, because now care seekers want to be able to take a good look at a care home before they commit to a visit.

Can you afford to ignore virtual tours any longer?

Reason 3

Showcase your care home at its very best

To website users, a virtual tour is the most realistic representation of a place or building that can be achieved online.

A really effective, impactful 360 virtual tour goes a step further than this, it’s a unique experience of your care home at its very best.

Imagine being able to control what you want your care home to look like, ideally, for every prospect that you encounter?

That’s a powerful thought as most marketing experts would agree, first impressions are lasting impressions.

Reason 4

Virtual tours have long shelf-lives and can be added to or amended

If you’re only looking to invest in marketing assets that’ll provide long-term business value and ROI then 360 virtual tours are worth considering.

Much like your actual website they can be continuously optimised, amended, and added to.

Maybe you want to embed the new welcome video you’ve just created or add a whole new outdoors section for people to explore.

As your care home business grows, so too can your virtual tour.

Reason 5

They help make a difficult decision just a little easier

Whether you’re seeking care for yourself or you’re looking for a much-loved parent, making decisions about long-term care can be really tough.

And even when you’ve made the decision to go ahead, finding the perfect care home can be overwhelming.

As we’ve already touched upon, on a practical level, taking time out from busy schedules to visit all possible care homes might not be feasible.

The tendency is toward greater prioritisation, with care seekers frequently drawing up short lists of potential care homes based on the information they’ve been able to gather about them online – whether it’s a care home directory site or the actual website.

Virtual tours provide an immersive digital experience for visitors to your website, are incredibly helpful in an often difficult decision-making process, and also provide exceptional ROI.