Bringing Tourbuzz up a notch

Hey Guys, Paul and Alan have come so far and they've created such an awesome viewer, that I just couldn't resist throwing some of my design skills at it. One thing I've been looking at recently with my new biz partner is the layout of the TB tours. I think we've come up with something that would really help dress up the tour and make it marketable against OBEO and Tourfactory.

I already talked to Alan once about the layout and they've got their hands pretty busy with the viewer so I decided to go ahead and mess with it a little bit myself. If you all like this a lot I might make it available to the providers in the form of an HTML template unless Alan can figure out a way to throw it into the system easily.

So take a look, let me know what I should keep/change, and remember it's only a first draft that still needs some refining so CC is appreciated.

This particular design is sans thumbnails on the side because I wanted to start with a simple layout first and then tackle thumbnails in after. Most likely I will have to make a drastic change in the design to incorporate the thumbnails without making the template look cramped.

The only thing that probably won't be available at first is the internal shadow on the viewer. It adds some much needed depth to a simple layout, but it will be hard to layer over the viewer unless Alan/Paul do it on their end first.



Here is my design draft (Top Middle) next to the existing tour (Top Left) and the Tourfactory "ultimate" tour template (Top Right), as well as a few other smaller templates from Obeo, Circlepix, Visualtour, etc.


The fuller sizes are available to look at below:

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Permalink Reply by Jerry R Bridges on April 29, 2009 at 4:13pm
I like it Chris and the shadow is what gives it that POP.
Permalink Reply by Michael Yearout on April 29, 2009 at 5:11pm
Chris: It is crisp and clean, highlighting the two most important elements - the Realtor and the home. The shadow effect reminds me of the old "drop shadow" effect I used to use (and still do) when I was a Journalist and was trying to get the photo to "jump out" from the page. I like it.
Permalink Reply by Michael Yearout on April 29, 2009 at 5:14pm
Chris: another thought - the icon to make the tour full screen is not that intutitive. I think the full screen version of the tours is very impressive. I think we ought to think about how to make it easier for viewers to view the tour full screen and then bring it back down to the "normal" view.
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on April 29, 2009 at 6:59pm


We have just today made a bunch of improvements (not available publicly quite yet) that improve this, you can see from the attachment the new FULLSCREEN icon. We'll probably make it a little prettier still, but we finally decided after a lot of testing that the only way people will know it's full screen is if it just SAYS it.

Alan
Permalink Reply by Hamish Tear on April 29, 2009 at 6:28pm
Chris,

Great work...I love it. However, with respect to all - we need to eventually come to a place where we are no longer always improving what exists and always being in Beta. It would be nice to reach a place where we are happy with what we have got and then work with it 'as is' for quite some time. Constant up-grading is not always the best thing as it always remains just a potential awaiting final release. Then perhaps Alan and Paul could get to other areas more behind the scenes or, Heaven forbid, maybe take a vacation. Oh - forget that - they need to work on the Neybor upgrades too.

Nice work,

Hamish
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on April 29, 2009 at 7:03pm
Heh yes we are quite busy these days :)

So we actually did have a "new" player about 6-8 months ago that was our "stable" player for a while, but it wasn't good enough for some people and we want to be the best so that's when we started on this player.

We have a vision for a tour platform that we want to get to and then things will stabilize for a while. We've only been selling TourBuzz for about 12 months, so we are still young and growing.

We hope to have a pretty stable platform within 6-9 months that we can run with for a long time.

Once the new player is out we will be spending more time on the backend as well to make using TourBuzz and adding features other than the player.

Alan
Permalink Reply by Linda Sabiston on April 29, 2009 at 8:43pm
Chris, nice work! I really like it. And I agree, it's the shadows and highlights that make it different from the rest.

Alan, I'm glad you've decided just to put the words "full screen" or whatever you choose. I haven't talked to one of my realtors that knew it had that feature!!

Linda
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on April 29, 2009 at 10:57pm
Yeah, we were getting a lot of that. After looking at all the major sites with "Full Screen" features, we could tell that they all have that problem.

In the end we figured the words "FULL SCREEN" were the only thing that would do the trick.

I put it to the "wife test" this evening and it worked so that bodes well :)

Alan
Permalink Reply by Len Goldman on April 29, 2009 at 10:41pm
Hi Everyone,

Sorry I missed the call Monday. Have looked forward to every call, and haven't been on any of them due to other commitment.

Just want to say that I have been with Tourbuzz since June of 08. I have been through all the changes, improvements and glitches.

I was with RTV before Tourbuzz, and struggled only doing 7 Tours in our first year.

Finding Tourbuzz was the best thing that ever happened to our business. In 10 months we have done 200 plus tours, and we are starting to make a big dent against our competitors.

I wanted to thank Alan and Paul for all their hard work. Without there upgrading and dedication, we could not have stood out from the crowd.

Thanks for the great job !!

Len
www.customvirtualtours.ca
Canada
Permalink Reply by Pat B on May 1, 2009 at 9:31am
Len this sounds like our company's history as well. Ditto with all what you said to Alan and Paul - thanks guys!

Pat
Permalink Reply by Steve Knievel on April 29, 2009 at 10:37pm
I agree with all the above. If being able to work in three to four templates for agents to choose from will best fit the character of the agent and home listed. Of course for simplicity having one great looking skin is better than none.

Just having the words full screen greatly improves the ability of regular people being able to use this feature.
Permalink Reply by Chris Thomas on April 29, 2009 at 11:09pm
Thanks Guys. I only spent about 45 minutes on the first cut/paste draft I did a few months and felt the layout was okay but the design needed work. This time I really took the time (close to 6 hours in total) that is needed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of what's available, decide how to improve on them, and then making it work in a way that easy to rework the existing layout.

@Michael, that was the goal- to emphasize the images and the agent without being distracting. I figure a "click to go full-size" button could be added really easily to the nav buttons at the top as a reduntant choice for people that won't notice the icon at the bottom.

@ Hamish, I totally agree, we need something that we can go with for several months instead of waiting for the next tweak every few weeks. Unfortunately until I can put a Tourbuzz tour up side-by-side with Tourfactory and the agent picks TB without hesitation, I have to keep rethinking it. I think Alan and Paul have done tremendous work in keeping the integrity of the image quality in tact with their viewer, I just hope I can help spice up the rest of it. I'm just doing what I have to to be competitive, and that includes designing my own skin for the TB viewer.

@ Steve, I'm hoping I can have 3-4 templates with 3-4 color variations for each, that an agent can choose from ranging from a simplistic layout like the one above, all the way to a multi-page property website with the viewer built in. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and eventually I always feel like I have to have things made specifically for my needs and wants.

@ Len, I'd like to say I was in your shoes, but I'm up against a deeply entrenched group of "big-box" companies that have had their systems in play for eight to ten years. I'm hoping a cool design will make it easier to break the market hold on those guys.

@ Alan, how long down the line do you think the WYSIWYG editor you were thinking about including is down the line? I just sent this .psd over to my partner for him to turn it into an HTML template/CSS stylesheet and I'll send you a link when it's finished. For the sake of speed at first we'll probably have to forego any resizing ability and have it a fixed size at first. I think I'm going to use a loading screen for the viewer to pick viewing the tour in two different sizes to fit both the smaller (1024x768) screens and the larger (1680x1050+) screens.

@Everyone, I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea that I'm trying to take anything from TB. I'll make my design and development services to anyone here that wants a custom layout/"skin" for their tours or a specific client's project, but you'll have to use the Tourbuzz viewer for me to do so. I figure that's the best way to keep from having a conflict of interest, plus the new viewer is kickass and remotely editable.

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