Gamifying Virtual Tours: How Interactivity Keeps Visitors Exploring

Quick answer: gamifying a virtual tour means giving the visitor something to do as well as something to look at: a goal, a way to see progress, a small reward and tools that let them try things out. Done well it keeps people looking for longer and looking more carefully. Done badly it gets in the way. This guide uses one of our own tours, the Embraer Legacy 600, to show the techniques and the rules we follow.

What gamifying a tour means (and what it does not)

It does not mean turning a tour into a video game. A virtual tour exists to show a place or a product, and the game elements are there to make a visitor look at more of it, and look harder. The standard tour is a set of panoramas joined by arrows. That is easy to use, and it is also easy to leave: after a few scenes a visitor has the idea, and there is nothing to pull them further in. Game mechanics supply the pull.

The mechanics are not exotic. In the Legacy 600 tour they are a hunt for hidden items, a counter, badges, a map that responds to a choice and a flight that runs while you explore. Each one answers a question a visitor is asking without knowing it: what am I here to do, how far have I got, and what happens if I try this?

1. Give the visitor something to find

The Legacy 600 hides eight items around the cabin, by day and by night. A visitor finds them by clicking them in the panorama, guided by a written clue: “Something sparkles above the galley counter” leads to a rack of crystal glassware. A goal like this changes how a person looks at a scene. Without one, a panorama is glanced at and left. With one, the visitor scans the whole sphere, notices the finish of the wood, the glassware and the controls on the seat, and checks the corners. They are looking at exactly the details the operator wants a buyer to see, because they are searching for something.

The same hunt is what makes visitors use both configurations. One item can only be found at night, so a visitor who has stayed in the day set-up is not done. That is a reason to switch, and to see the beds, which is the thing a long-range buyer most wants to see.

2. Make progress visible

People are more willing to finish something when they can see how much is left. The Legacy tour keeps a count in the toolbar, 0 of 8 becoming 1 of 8 with each stamp, and a passport panel lists every item as found or not found yet. Our St Peter’s School tour does the same job for a different audience, with a count of how many of its 45 spaces a family has explored, and a “you are here” marker on the space they are in. A parent does not need a game, but a visible count of what they have seen and what is left makes them more likely to finish the circuit.

3. Reward the behaviour you want

Finding an item earns a stamp, a short chime and a message. Wider behaviour earns badges. The seven badges in the Legacy tour map to the things the operator wants a visitor to do: step onto the flight deck (Captain), see every area by day (Day tripper) and by night (Night owl), find everything (Eagle eye), look up five different destinations (Route planner), fly a route from start to finish (Wheels up) and seat all 13 guests (Full house). Several of those are not about finding anything. They push the visitor into the range map, the flight and the seat planner, the features that take the longest to use and say the most about the aircraft.

That is the useful way to think about rewards. Decide what a good visit looks like, then reward each part of it.

4. Add tools to play with, not just things to look at

Some of the strongest interactivity in the tour is not a game at all. The range explorer lets a visitor choose any of 36 airports, change the number of passengers and watch the range shape redraw, then pick a destination and see whether it is non-stop, wind permitting or needs a fuel stop. “Fly it” then runs the journey on the cabin’s own bulkhead screens, with the plane moving along the route, the distance and time to go changing and a flight panel counting down. The seat planner lets a visitor put their own guests on board.

These work because they ask the visitor a question of their own: where would I fly, and who would come with me? They turn a spec sheet into a personal answer, and each of them is a reason to stay for another few minutes. They are also close to the real decision. A person who has checked that their usual trip is non-stop is closer to an enquiry than one who has glanced at a seat.

5. Let the visitor take something away

The Legacy tour asks for a name for the boarding pass, which the visitor can download. It is a minor gesture, but it makes the visit feel like theirs, and a downloaded pass with the visitor’s name on it is a reminder of the tour that sits on their device after the tab has closed.

How this extends concentration and dwell time

The honest answer is that a tour with a goal, a count and a reward gives a visitor many more reasons to keep going than one without, and that they therefore tend to spend longer in it and to pay closer attention to the content. We have not published dwell-time figures for the Legacy tour and we would be wary of anyone who quotes a precise uplift without showing how it was measured. What we can describe is the mechanism:

• A goal turns passive looking into active searching, so people examine each scene more closely.
• A visible count gives a natural target, so people carry on past the point they would have left.
• Rewards for particular behaviours send people to the features that matter most, rather than leaving them to find those by chance.
• Tools that answer a personal question (where could I go, who would sit where) keep people engaged because the answer matters to them.

If dwell time matters to you, measure it. Tour analytics can show how long visitors stay, which scenes they open and which features they use, and that is better evidence for your own audience than any general claim. For wider figures on how people use tours, see our round-up of virtual tour statistics.

Rules we follow so it does not backfire

• Keep it optional. The tour must work perfectly for a visitor who ignores the game. The Legacy tour is fully navigable without ever opening the passport.
• Never trap people. A clue can be too hard, so every one has a “Show me” button. A visitor who is stuck should be helped, not left to give up.
• Make the game serve the content. Every item hidden in the Legacy tour is part of the aircraft, and every badge sends a visitor to something the operator wants them to see. A hunt for arbitrary objects would be a distraction.
• Fit the subject. A boarding pass, a passport and a range map suit an aircraft. A school is better served by a route planner and an explored count, and a factory by a mode that follows the product down the line, as in our Schneider Electric tour.
• Respect accessibility. Sound can be switched off, motion can be reduced, hotspots can be made larger, the controls work from a keyboard and a full text version of the tour is always available.
• Work on a phone. Many visitors will be on a phone, so every mechanic has to work with a thumb.
• Do not make claims for it. Gamification is a way to hold attention and to guide it. It does not replace good photography, and it works best on a tour that is already worth exploring.

Where it works best

Gamified features suit tours where a visitor has time and a reason to explore: aircraft and yachts, museums and heritage sites, schools and colleges with open days, hotels and venues, and training spaces where seeing everything matters. They are less useful for a quick property viewing, where the visitor wants to see the rooms and leave. The test is whether a longer, more attentive visit would help the person who commissioned the tour.

Building one

Gamified features are part of our bespoke virtual tours, and are designed around the place and the audience rather than added from a template. The tour is hosted by us with no yearly fee, and the built-in CMS lets you update the text of the tour yourself. You can read the full Legacy 600 case study or talk to us about a tour that keeps visitors exploring.