A Street View Tour Inside Your Business

Inside, not only the street

Most owners know Street View as the camera car that photographed their storefront from the road. Fewer know that it can also go inside.

A photographer with Google's trusted badge for Street View work shoots 360-degree photographs at points through the business and joins them up, so a viewer can move from the entrance to the counter to the back room on a screen.

The tour appears with your Google listing and in Google Maps. Someone deciding whether to visit can walk through your door before they leave home.

What a newcomer wants to see

• The entrance, and which door to use.
• The size of the room, and how it might feel when busy.
• Steps, ramps and space for wheelchairs and strollers.
• Where to sit, and which tables have the view.
• Whether it suits a group, a date or children.
• That the place matches the photographs they have seen.

The third is the one photographs rarely answer. A chosen angle can hide two steps at the door; a connected tour cannot, and somebody using a wheelchair needs to know before setting out.

How the tours are made

The photographer sets up a camera at a series of points through the space and takes a full 360-degree image at each one.

The points are linked so a viewer can step from one to the next. For a small business the shoot usually takes a morning or less.

The business pays the photographer, who sets their own price, usually by the size of the space and the number of points. Google does not charge for showing the tour.

Once published, the images stay on Google Maps for years, which is why the preparation matters more than the shoot.

Every wall is the front

An ordinary photograph has a side behind the camera. A 360-degree image does not, so everything in the room is in the picture.

That includes the staff schedule pinned by the kitchen, the stack of boxes in the corner, the open office door and the whiteboard with customer names on it.

Clear every surface, close doors to rooms that are not part of the tour, take down anything personal or confidential, and switch every light on.

Avoid seasonal decorations, which will look odd in July. Check menu boards and price lists too, since they will stay readable for years.

Plan the route through the space

Decide before the shoot where the tour should begin and which way it should go. For most businesses that means starting outside, at the door customers actually use.

Then follow the path a first-time customer takes: entrance, counter or host stand, the main room, and anything they might ask about, such as a patio, a private room or a waiting area.

Leave out what customers never see, such as the kitchen, the stockroom and the office. Agree the route with the photographer beforehand, so the points follow it rather than every corner of the building.

A worked example

A seafood restaurant occupies the upper floor of a harbourfront building, with its dining room and window tables up a flight of stairs and an elevator at the back of the building.

First-time customers often arrived at the wrong door, and groups phoned to ask whether the private room would suit a birthday dinner for twenty.

The owner booked a photographer for a morning before opening. Staff set the tables as for dinner, cleared the host stand, took the schedule off the wall and closed the office.

The tour starts on the sidewalk at the street door, climbs the stairs, passes through the bar to the window tables and ends in the private room. A second route shows the elevator entrance at the back.

The kitchen and the office were left out of the route entirely. The restaurant embedded the tour on its private dining page and linked it from the directions on its contact page.

Questions to ask the photographer

Ask who publishes the tour and under which account, and who can replace or remove it later. A tour published by someone you cannot reach is hard to change.

Ask whether you may embed it on your own site and use the still images elsewhere, and what the price includes: how many points, which rooms, and any reshoot.

And ask how long publishing takes, so you know when to look for it on your listing.

When it is worth paying for

A tour earns its cost where the space is part of what customers are choosing: restaurants, venues, hotels, gyms, salons and event rooms.

It also helps businesses that are hard to find, such as an entrance off a lane or a unit inside a larger building, and places people visit nervously for the first time.

A useful test is the phone. If customers regularly call to ask what the place is like, where the door is, or whether a wheelchair or stroller will fit, a tour answers that once, for everyone.

It does far less for trades that work at the customer's home, offices clients never visit, and spaces about to be renovated.

Keeping it current

A tour from before a renovation is worse than no tour, because it shows customers a room that no longer exists.

Plan a reshoot after any significant change to the layout, entrance or decor, and ask for the old images to be replaced rather than added to.

The counter-case

For many businesses, a handful of good, current photographs on the listing does most of what a tour does, for much less.

A home-based business should think twice before publishing the inside of a home. And a space that is cluttered by nature, or changes every week, will look worse in 360 degrees than in chosen photographs.

Where the room is part of the decision, though, a tidy, well-planned tour answers questions no photograph can.

Before the shoot

1. Check you have one listing, not two.
2. Decide where the tour starts, usually outside.
3. Book a morning before opening.
4. Clear every surface the camera will see.
5. Take down anything personal or confidential.
6. Agree who controls the published tour.
7. Embed it on your directions page.

Step five is the one that cannot be fixed later without a reshoot. A schedule or client list on the wall stays readable to anyone who looks, for as long as the tour is up.

A tour attaches to a single listing, so first make sure there is only one, as covered in duplicate Google listings for one business.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.