Imagine a prospective student lounging at home and scrolling through your interactive campus map. They click on the academic program they’re interested in and instantly step into a virtual experience filled with immersive photos, videos, and personal stories. The applicant sees how students interact with their surroundings and each other through interactive map tours.
Then, they can suddenly envision themselves being a part of your campus environment. An interactive campus map with embedded tours can bring your campus to life in ways you never imagined, allowing prospective students to experience a life-like tour even when they’re hundreds of miles away.
Concept3D’s interactive maps showcase what makes your campus unique with 3D renderings and live data feeds that bring your location to life. Students virtually exploring the campus can navigate from one place of interest to another. They can also gain added insight from interactive map tours to get a realistic view of campus life in specific locations. With search functions, intuitive real-time wayfinding features, accessible resources, and our new embedded tours, interactive maps offer a deeper and more engaging campus experience for both remote and in-person visitors. Universities can now bring their campus to life in a way that enhances recruitment, improves visitor navigation, and delivers unmatched value—without additional costs.
The Power of Storytelling in Admissions
Prospective students need to be able to “see themselves on campus” to develop a sense of belonging and commit to a school. An attractive campus, engaging academic programs, and exciting social opportunities can build interest. But students need to form a personal connection with your school. However, not all prospective students can visit in person.
3D renderings in a detailed campus map bring buildings to life, and real-time data provided by live data feeds (like live cams) deliver a true sense of what’s happening in the moment. Interactive map tours enhance the experience by offering a dynamic way to showcase academic programs, student life, and campus culture through multimedia content. Students and visitors can seamlessly move from navigation to interactive content to experience life-like interaction with your campus.
When can you use embedded interactive map tours in your interactive maps to tell real stories about your campus?
Admissions-Focused Tours
Students crave comprehensive and personalized information during the admissions process. Whether they tour the campus in person or virtually, interactive maps with embedded tours can offer abundant information about what students can expect on campus.
Include these critical informational and engagement points when preparing your interactive map for admissions tours:
- Outstanding wayfinding features that illustrate available parking options and best routes to various buildings and places of interest
- Embedded tours with brief 360-degree views of buildings and facilities
- Information about academic programs with short videos that highlight the expertise of faculty, student experiences, and career outcomes
- Additional layers of information to support in-person tours with technology, including social media posts and interactive components
- Tours of living spaces, including student centers, dining halls, recreational facilities, and dorm rooms, to help students envision their day-to-day life on campus
- Labels, search functions, and routes that support accessibility needs to make students with a wide range of backgrounds and needs feel welcome on campus
Audience-Specific Tours
Adding overlays to your map can help you design audience-specific interactive map tours. These tours can be designed for first-year students, family visits, international student experiences, and more to engage students and visitors with your campus and provide vital information before their arrival. New student maps, especially, can help with retention and immediate success on campus.
When supported with real-time data, they can provide timely details about available parking, bus stops, shuttle routes, and other transportation features. Search features will make it easy for users to find event locations. They can easily find the ideal routes to navigate from point A to point B. Embedded tours in these maps can highlight points of interest that align with the audience’s needs.
Self-Guided Campus Exploration
Self-guided tours are the ideal way to allow students to explore the areas of your campus most aligned with their interests. They also build engagement to form a personal connection. When these tours are enhanced with abundant information, pictures, videos, and interactive map tours, students can virtually experience the lifestyle offered by your campus.
When you use integrated maps from Concept3D, these experiences are seamlessly integrated into the campus map. Prospective students can go beyond a set of locations to see how different areas of campus connect in real life. You can create self-guided tours to explore living spaces, recreational areas, or campus buildings associated with the target audience’s learning interests. These additions also enhance engagement and build authentic connections.
A Smarter Way to Justify Investment in Campus Maps
Getting buy-in for new virtual tours can be challenging when marketing and admissions teams are working on a shoestring budget. The issue is amplified when you need not one but multiple virtual tours. Engaging tours are not only useful for exploring campus, after all. They are ideal for showcasing dorms, other living spaces, academic areas, dining options, special events, and more.
Unlimited interactive map tours add substantial value without adding extra costs associated with multiple disjointed tours. Concept3D answers the need for multiple tours seamlessly integrated into navigational features in a single solution. Concept3D’s CMS gives you the tools to build interactive maps and virtual tours with engaging extras like:
- YouTube or Vimeo videos
- Photos
- 360-degree panoramas
- Location information
- And more
The benefits of virtual tours offer several ways for universities to cut costs while attracting more students. When these tours are embedded into your interactive campus map, you can stretch your investment dollar even further by offering multiple tours without extra costs.
Embedded tours support ROI with these essential advantages:
- Increase student engagement on your website.
- Improve visit scheduling by offering self-guided alternatives.
- Attract more international and out-of-state students who can’t visit in person.
- Reduce the costs related to in-person events when students are just beginning to explore their options.
- Enhance tours with links to additional information about sports, academic programs, activities, dorm life, and more to engage students through videos, pictures, and social media.
UC Davis Created Multiple Map Tours Without Increasing Their Budget
The interactive map at UC Davis is a shining example of how campus maps with embedded tours can engage students in various aspects of campus life. The university provides ten different map tours to allow students to interact virtually with various points of interest. Tours include:
- A campus self-guided tour
- College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
- College of Biological Sciences
- Graduate School of Management
- College of Engineering
- College of Letters and Science
- Dining on campus
- First-year student housing
- Housing for incoming students with families
- The unique Egghead tour
Since these tours are included in the campus map, UC Davis was able to create several unique virtual experiences with no added cost.
Enhancing the Campus Experience for Visitors and Students
Map tours are not just for prospective students. They’re ideal for helping families, visitors, and even current students navigate campus. Various annual events bring hundreds or even thousands of visitors to your campus. These events often require logistical changes to handle the extra traffic effectively.
A high-quality interactive map provides essential wayfinding and navigation features. You can highlight parking, event locations, and routes between the two. You can even provide real-time information about bus or shuttle times. Embedded tours enhance the experience with engaging 360-degree tours of event locations and areas of interest. When tours are seamlessly integrated with campus navigation, visitors get real-time, location-aware content with information about available resources and services.
Some of the most popular uses for engaging guests with interactive maps on a college campus include:
- Orientation and move-in day: Self-guided tours are ideal for helping first-year students and their families prepare for the first days on campus. Users can explore the campus at their own pace and get insightful views of various points of interest.
- Event-specific navigation: Map overlays allow you to prepare your campus for specific events like open houses, graduation, campus tours, family weekends, sports events, and so on. Adding event-specific tours to these overlays can help you inform and engage guests before and during their visit.
- Alums and donor engagement: Interactive campus maps are critical for alums and donor engagement. Embedded tours enhance the experience by showcasing new buildings and historical campus sites of interest. Whether visitors explore the map before their arrival or use it to complement an in-person tour, interactive maps with embedded tours enhance the experience with added visuals and information.
Ready to Elevate Your Interactive Map?
Embedding tours into your Concept3D interactive map offers a range of benefits. Enhance your admissions offerings, streamline guest visits, and show prospective and current students everything your campus offers. When wayfinding and virtual exploration are combined in one seamless experience, users can experience how different areas of campus connect in real life for an authentic visiting experience that mimics an in-person visit. You can engage prospective students and visitors with immersive storytelling by adding photos, videos, and 360-degree panoramas that enhance recruitment and maximize campus engagement for all audiences. Since Concept3D includes unlimited tours at no extra cost, universities can justify the investment to encourage buy-in from all stakeholders.
Ready to explore how Concept3D’s industry-leading interactive maps with embedded virtual tours can transform your campus? Contact us today to learn more.