Interactive Maps with Guided Video Tours
The Northern Kentucky University Interactive Map features guided video tours in English & Spanish.
When prospective students or visitors arrive at the online campus map, often it is their first glimpse of your campus. Many times, these visitors do not yet have a firm grasp of your institution, so they mouse over buildings at random, or head to the Locations list or search box to find the items most pertinent to them. However, an increasing number of organizations have begun constructing video tours that work in coordination with their campus maps to create an intimate and compelling visit experience.
Welcoming Visitors with Video
Welcoming visitors with a video tour isn’t a new idea, but coupling it with your interactive map can lead to some interesting options and experiences. Today most institutions have created some sort of guided campus experience, but many of these occur at arms length from the campus map, so the layout of campus isn’t a large part of the campus story. With CampusTours AnyMap you can create Guided Tours in a variety of ways – you can create normal Guided Campus Tours, Guided Housing Tours emphasizing your residence and dining options or even foreign language Guided Tours targeting students in countries where you actively recruit.
Coupling Video with Map Movement
When coupling video tours with your interactive map, it is important to make the behavior as intuitive as possible for the visitor. Schools like Stevens Institute of Technology, Central Michigan University, Northern Kentucky University and Pepperdine University use the AnyMap and AnyTour systems to effectively coordinate the interplay between guided tours and the campus map. Effective coordination entails highlighting the appropriate building(s) for each stop at the outset and during the duration of the stop (unless the user overrides with map exploration), and it can also involve the coordinated movement of the map to showcase other locations, the highlighting of a map layer to indicate multiple locations, or the combination of several behaviors during a single video stop. Coordinating map behavior with video increases the illustrative value of your interactive map system, and gives you many options for targeting specific audiences, campus events or even as a fundraising tool.
Providing Depth Beyond Videos
One of the important aspects of integrating video experiences with your interactive map is that as your visitors explore the video tours, they are likely to find their interest piqued at various stops or buildings. By clicking on the building highlighted for the current stop, the visitor pauses the video and immediately begins a more in-depth exploration of content within that location. Essentially the video tours serve as an introduction to your interactive map, drawing visitors in and helping them understand the important aspects and layout of campus, at which point they can leap in a more informed exploration of your campus.
