Virtual tours 101: what they are and when to use one
What a 360 virtual tour actually is, how it differs from video and floor plans, and the listing situations where it earns its keep.
A 360° virtual tour is a sequence of panoramic photos linked together so a buyer can walk through a property from their phone, in any direction, at any time of day, without an agent present. Done well, it does three things at once: it filters out tire-kickers, it captures contact info from real prospects, and it makes the listing look like someone took it seriously.
What a 360 tour is — and what it isn't
It's not a video. Video controls the viewer's eye; a 360 tour gives that control to the buyer. They look where they want — out the kitchen window, up at the ceiling height, down at the floor finish.
It's not a Matterport-style 3D model either. Matterport produces a continuous mesh you can drift through; a 360 tour is a graph of stitched photos with hotspots that jump you between rooms. The mesh looks impressive in a sales demo, but for a house going on the market this Friday it's overkill — it costs more, takes longer, and converts no better.
When a tour actually moves the needle
Not every listing needs a virtual tour. Some clearly do:
- Out-of-area buyers. Relocations, second homes, investors. They can't drive by. The tour replaces three FaceTime walkthroughs.
- Higher price points. Above your local median, buyers expect more marketing. A tour is now table stakes; not having one is a tell.
- Hard-to-show properties. Tenant-occupied, vacant rural, or anything where coordinating a showing is a chore. Let the tour do the first showing.
- Luxury rentals and short-term lets. Tours convert listing browsers to bookers at a meaningfully higher rate than photos alone.
- New construction. Sell from a model unit and a tour, even if the building isn't done yet.
And some where it's optional polish: a $400k starter home with strong curb appeal in a hot market will sell in a weekend whether or not it has a tour. Spend the time elsewhere.
Why lead capture is the actual product
A pretty tour is nice. A tour that gives you the email address of every serious prospect who watched it is a different category of tool — that's a CRM input, not just a marketing asset. The whole reason Tourly exists is that competitor tours treat lead capture as an afterthought (or sell it as a $50/mo add-on); we put it in the gate position.
We'll cover the mechanics in Lead capture, but the framing matters here: when you set up your first tour, decide up front what you want a viewer to do. Schedule a showing? Reply with questions? Get on a list for the next listing? The tour should funnel toward that single action.
Anatomy of a Tourly tour
A tour is made up of:
- Scenes — one 360 photo per location. Front yard, foyer, living room, kitchen, etc.
- Hotspots — clickable markers placed inside a scene. Most of them are doorways that take you to the next room. Some open info panels, embedded video, or external links.
- An opening view per scene — the direction and zoom level the camera starts at when a viewer arrives in that room. Get this wrong and the whole tour feels disorienting.
- Branding — your logo, headshot, name, and a contact CTA pinned to the top-right corner of the viewer.
- A lead gate — the form that appears after a viewer has poked around long enough to be worth capturing.
That's it. Five concepts. The rest of this guide is just doing each of them well.
What's next
Before any of that matters, you need a camera that produces clean equirectangular photos. The next chapter walks through what's worth buying — and what to skip.