Every campus tour—and virtual campus tour—begins with questions. Students want to know: Will I feel comfortable here? Where will I learn? What support is available?
Virtual campus tours allow you to answer those questions with beautiful campus views enhanced with context through text, audio, and CTAs that illustrate next steps. The panoramic views give students a sense of being there while contextual information helps them evaluate whether the campus fits their needs. The most effective virtual campus tours are structured around a specific audience and their questions, then built by bringing together the places and information that answer them. A virtual campus tour goes beyond Q&A-style communications, giving institutions a way to connect campus spaces with the stories students need to hear to determine whether a campus fits their needs.
Our step-by-step guide shares how to create a virtual campus tour that highlights your institution’s best assets and provides answers to the real questions prospective students bring to the college search
1. Determine Who the Tour Is For
The most effective virtual campus tours are designed with a specific audience in mind. Cost, academic programs, athletics, and campus life are top factors in the college search. But prospective students approach campus tours with different priorities.
How do priorities differ between incoming students?
- First-year students typically ask about housing, dining, and finding community.
- Transfer students may prioritize academic resources and support.
- Commuter students may want to understand parking and places to spend time between classes.
- Families often ask about student support and everyday campus life.
Your primary audience and the people who help them make decisions guide your tour’s structure and design, including language, opening message, featured spaces, and next steps. Understanding your audience’s priorities allows you to tailor tour stops and information to their interests. This immediately makes tours more engaging and informative. In many cases, the right content makes the difference in converting interest into belonging with relevant content that builds trust.
Sonoma State’s use of Concept3D’s multilingual 360-degree tour is an excellent example of how to create a virtual campus tour for a specific audience. In an effort to target families in the area’s growing Spanish-speaking population, the university partnered with Concept3D to create a tour that showcases the school’s picturesque location in California wine country with a multilingual feature that provides information in Spanish. The tour positions Sonoma State University to engage its target audience of first-generation college students in Hispanic communities and better tell the story of its unique offerings.
2. Find the Questions Students Actually Ask
Virtual tours are now considered a vital component of the college search, with the essential parts of a virtual campus tour defined by student intent. Understanding the questions students ask about college campuses will help you choose the best tour stops.
Gather questions from admissions counselors, student ambassadors, campus visit conversations, information sessions, and prospective-student emails. Reach out to current students to ask what they wish they had known before arriving. Group recurring questions into themes, such as learning, daily life, belonging, and support. Then consider how views of campus resources and structures can answer these questions. For example, your tour can answer broad questions such as “Where will I find my community?” with concrete answers through content about student organizations, gathering spaces, or opportunities to get involved.
When choosing tour stops, prioritize the questions that matter most to your chosen audience. Get started by building a three-category list that includes student questions, campus locations, and supporting information. Connect questions with locations and use supporting information to develop tour commentary. The questions and their connections on your chart will become the basis for deciding which locations to include in your virtual campus tour.
3. Curate Stops That Answer Students’ Questions
An effective virtual campus tour answers students’ questions with a cohesive campus journey. So, each stop should have a clear purpose in the student’s exploration. An engaging tour stop will answer recurring student questions with interactive visuals that tell a story and supporting language that provides crucial information about each location.
How can virtual tour stops answer common student questions?
- Where can I get help with coursework? Highlight tutoring or academic support.
- What will classrooms look like? Include classrooms, studios, and labs.
- Where will I spend time between classes? Showcase dining areas, lounges, or outdoor gathering spaces.
- What is living on campus like? Add residence halls and shared amenities.
While choosing tour stops, consider how you can connect your virtual campus tour to campus life. Sequence stops around a specific experience, such as a student’s typical day or an introduction to academic and campus life. Balance essential tour stops with opportunities for deeper exploration, using relevance to the audience to guide inclusion. Use text, audio, and links to additional information to explain what happens in each space, who uses it, and why it matters.
As you’re developing the tour, run a quick test to gauge effectiveness with a simple fill-in-the-blank exercise. “After exploring this stop, a student should be able to answer ______.” For example, a library stop can move beyond describing the building to showcase study spaces, research help, and the resources that students can use, answering multiple questions in one stop.
4. Use Media and Interaction to Clarify Answers
Locations are only one element in the essential parts of a virtual campus tour. Supporting information provided in engaging formats enhances visuals with crucial details that answer student questions.
Elements to add at each location may include:
- Text hotspots: Use these to explain services and point out useful details.
- Images: Show activities, perspectives, and events that the panorama doesn’t capture.
- Video or audio: Include content explained by students and staff, in their own words.
- Calls to action: Connect visitors to relevant next steps.
While multiple tour elements can be engaging, overuse can create confusion. Use elements selectively to contribute to each stop’s purpose without overloading users with information. Every stop should be enhanced with descriptive labels and concise explanations. You can also provide next steps that fit the content a visitor has just explored.
Bristol Community College’s use of hotspots, images, and CTAs in its Concept3D 360-degree tour is an excellent example of using special features to communicate with students. After implementing the tour on the campus website, student resources, and email drip campaigns, administrators can then see the added value of clear information and next steps, with students increasingly using the tour to get campus information. Ultimately, the immersive 360-degree tour allows Bristol Community College to easily showcase what makes the college unique. It also gets students excited for an in-person experience.
Creating virtual campus tours with Concept3D has become even easier with the Tour Builder Media Library. Users can upload media (including panoramas, images, videos, audio tracks, 360-degree videos, and icons) to the library before adding it to a tour stop. When building a tour, search filters make it easy to find items and convert them into engaging tour stops.
5. Keep the Virtual Campus Tour Useful as Student Needs Evolve
College and university campuses change constantly, offering ever-expanding programs, services, and more effective learning spaces. Admissions questions evolve with these changes, prompting the need for ongoing review and remediation of your virtual campus tours. When conducting reviews, examine each stop to ensure it still answers its intended questions and that linked information is current.
You can also use reviews as an opportunity to consider creating different routes for various audiences to maintain relevant experiences. Using shared spaces across multiple tours allows you to design tours with each target audience’s priorities in mind. Concept3D tour users can simplify this step significantly with the new Tour Stop Library that allows administrators to reuse stops across tours and update shared stops in one simple step.
After making changes, gather feedback from prospective students and families to learn what became clearer and what questions remain. Use the feedback to refine stop selection, explanations, and next steps.
Build Virtual Campus Tours Around What Students Need to Understand
The essential parts of a virtual campus tour are defined by the questions students ask and how your campus’s programs and places answer them. Build relevant virtual campus tours by choosing an audience, understanding its questions, and curating stops that answer them. A useful tour will connect campus spaces to the experiences and resources students care about, highlighting campus assets and helping students determine if your school is a good fit.
Wondering whether your campus tour effectively answers prospective students’ questions? Run a simple test to find out. Identify five common questions from one audience and assess how well the current tour answers them. If the tour doesn’t meet your expectations, then consider how an updated tour might increase engagement, making it easy for students to identify your school as the right choice for their future.
Looking for some clear examples of how to create a virtual campus tour? See how Sonoma State and Bristol Community College use Concept3D 360-degree tours to help students and families explore their campuses. Interested in learning how 360-degree tours from Concept3D can highlight your campus assets to engage prospective students and answer their questions? Schedule a demo today.