Cutting edge Techniques could increase Conservatory Sales: Enhancing your website

‘The Internet has the potential to generate low-cost sales leads' said industry marketing consultancy In Your Face in the March issue of Glass Age.

In your Face are a company which has recently launched two new lead generating schemes for installers. Both use the Internet - an area that few installation companies have tapped into'. Successes, so far, have included Heritage Glass and the Heritage Garage Door network.

So, once you've managed to get people onto your website, what kind of content is likely to attract customers and increase sales?

Masten Gregory, manager of Virtutour, suppliers of virtual tours and panoramic photography, believes that there is a big lesson to be learnt from both the Hotel and Real Estate sectors who have used exciting and interactive visual content on their websites, specifically Virtual Tours, to increase sales.

An effective approach

Dramatic and eye-catching 3-D virtual tours of conservatories enable potential customers to see exactly what a manufacturers' conservatories look like, in a way still images cannot.

Furthermore they can do this anytime they like, from the comfort of their own home. With a clearer idea of the product range and its potential for their own home, the customer is now more likely to visit the showroom.

Virtual Tours are essentially a very effective sales and marketing tool. Allowing a customer to interactively look up, down, left and right by dragging on the image, they convey the feeling of a space much more effectively than static images.

This is particularly relevant to conservatories because of the difficulty of showcasing the roof sections using traditional 2-D photography. In 3-D it's not a problem.

Virtutour 's speciality is in producing ultra-high quality, high impact, full-screen 3D images that really draw the customer in. They've taken the technology and pushed it to its limit resulting in spectacular images.

Ross Smith, Director of Mindshelf Marketing, a high profile midlands based Marketing Company has used the service to develop and enhance the website of one of his clients - a conservatory manufacturer. This is what he had to say:

‘Recently we wanted to include some 360 degree Panoramic Virtual Tour Photography in a website we were building for a client whose product needed internal and spatial communication as part of the visitor experience.

Virtual Tours increase site 'stickiness', with viewers spending 20 minutes or more on a site

‘We had heard of Virtutour and decided to give them a shot at the project. We would positively recommend Virtutour to anyone wanting a cost effective solution to 360 degree Virtual Tour technology'

Hotel success

The most exciting thing for sales, is the hotel and real estate industries have been using this technology to increase profits for a few years now and the results are impressive.

Hotels with a Virtual Tour achieved 135% increase in online revenue amounting to over $7,200 per hotel per month over those without a Virtual Tour (Source: Radisson.com)

Virtual Tours increase site 'stickiness', with viewers spending 20 minutes or more on a site (as opposed to an average of 2-3 minutes on sites without a tour)

How it works

The process itself, from the manufacturers point of view, is simple. A date for the photo shoot is arranged. Virtutour then sends a specially trained photographer who uses dedicated photographic equipment to capture the conservatories. The images are then processed using specialised software into 3-D panoramas and delivered to the manufacturers webmasters who will put them on the website.

Cost is relatively low considering the fact that the process brings a manufacturer's conservatories into the homes of anyone with a computer and internet connection.

Virtutour are looking to work with conservatory manufacturers' who are excited by the new marketing possibilities the internet is bringing, and who realise that one of the keys to success is an exciting and engaging web presence.