If you are in charge of marketing an educational center to potential students or parents of the students, you need to find a way to draw them in. While in-person tours can be persuasive and effective, these are only beneficial if individuals are physically present at your school or university.
There may be prospective students (or their parents) that look up your educational center online, so take advantage of this opportunity by allowing them to virtually visit you!
5 Reasons to Use Virtual Tours on Your School’s Website:
1) A virtual tour will help people to become comfortable with your facility.
By allowing website visitors to visually check out your school or university, they will become familiar with it. This is important, especially for website visitors who may currently live out of the area and perhaps are looking to move into the region. For universities or educational facilities that specialize in teaching specific skills/careers, students who are too far away to take a physical tour may be thinking of applying!
2) Not every school website offers virtual tours, so this allows yours to stand out online.
It’s common for the websites of educational centers to display pictures of their buildings and to relay details about the education they provide. However, not all schools offer actual virtual or interactive tours. By doing this, your facility can stand out among the other schools people come across in online search results. A virtual tour makes your educational center come alive and gives website visitors a realistic idea of the layout and what they can expect.
3) A virtual tour can highlight how your educational center is unique.
Throughout an online virtual tour, you can display the areas of your school that make it special. Even if there are other schools in the area that offer similar educational classes or courses, there are no doubt things about yours that are superior and different.
4) Virtual tours are more engaging than photos.
Website visitors who view your school’s virtual tour are more likely to be engaged than if you were to only display a photo gallery. It allows them to see the school grounds/buildings/campus, and they can better picture themselves there. This may very well be the most interesting feature of your website for potential students or their parents!
5) Displaying a virtual tour will present your school and website in a professional manner.
Using a virtual tour on your website will help your school come across as professional. It will indicate that you are welcoming of new students, but also that you are serious about the education you offer. Virtual tours are perceived as high-quality, which is how you want your school portrayed as well.
Make the Most of Virtual Tours on Your Website
At concept3D, we recognize that it’s not just about using virtual tours, but also about how you use them! That’s why we’ve collected these three tips to help you make the most out of your virtual tours.
1) Use virtual tours to highlight the history of your school.
In addition to using virtual tours to display a current view of the layout and features of your educational center, you can also use them to show the history of your school.
Many businesses have an online ‘about us’ page that talks about when they were established and what their facility/services were like at the time they started. Sharing the details of a school’s rich history likewise helps it to come across as stable and reputable.
Instead of just talking about the history of the school, and only trying to describe what it was like, you can show your website visitors! Take advantage of a virtual tour to show how your school was when it started, where things used to be, and how far you’ve progressed.
In addition to a historical virtual tour, you can share some quick ‘fun facts’ on your site about the history of your school/university. You could even include a few short stories of students who graduated/attended your school in the past and what they went on to do (especially if there are some whose names will be recognized!)
2) Use virtual tours to show the full picture of your school (not just where classes take place.)
In addition to showing the layout of the school itself and drawing attention to where different classes and courses are taught, you can also highlight other areas in connection with your school. This could include areas outside of the building, such as fields for sports or other areas designated for outdoor activities for students.
If there are on-site living accommodations (for campuses, boarding schools, etc.) you can show a tour of the layout of the living facilities and even how the individual dorm rooms look. This is important for students or their parents who may have some anxieties about them moving away from home and living elsewhere. It will help to put them at ease and become more comfortable with the idea of them going to your school.
3. Use a virtual tour in connection with genuine testimonials.
It’s also beneficial to include examples of positive real-life experiences in connection with your educational center. By displaying good results on your site in addition to virtual tours that show an interesting and pleasant physical environment, you increase the effectiveness of the tours. Testimonials and virtual tours are powerful marketing tools on their own, but by making effective use of both of these, you are more likely to persuade website visitors to apply to or attend your school.
You could use brief quoted statements for testimonials, or even show a professional video recording of people’s experiences.
A few types of testimonials you could include:
- Experiences of students who’ve completed their education at your facility and how they’ve benefited.
- Parents’ perspectives on how they made the right choice sending their children to your school.
- Quotes from teachers who enjoy working there and what they love the most about the atmosphere.
- Statements from well-known employers/companies that are eager to hire graduates from your school/university.
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