Google Street View for Business is something we offer to our customers. This is a 360 degree internal photographic tour of a building (such as a shop, play centre or museum) and it’s linked to Google maps so it comes up in search results.
Above is a Street View Tour we did for Arbuthnot Opticians in Barry, south Wales.
A Google Street View Tour can have some real practical uses, here are some examples we created for customers:
- A college for young people with additional needs use a tour so new students can familiarise themselves with the facilities (view the tour here)
- Stockport Town Hall use their tour to demonstrate the facilities they have for hire. (Visit the town hall here).
- An opticians tour gives customers the chance to browse the range of frames they have available, as well as visit the testing room. (Take a look here).
The cost of a tour depends on how large the area is that a tour needs to cover, and certified Street View photographers tend to follow the price guide issued by Google. As a guide, a small business (such as a high street shop) would be £225 + VAT, a business with two or three separate rooms (such as a vets or opticians) is £350 + VAT, then a larger business on two levels with about five or six rooms is £450 + VAT.
We have done tours for entire buildings such as warehouses and colleges and the cost for these are all calculated by visiting the location.
Most of the Google Street View Tours we have done have also been made into videos, and can be seen here.
If you are thinking about getting a quote for Google Street View, consider the following:
- Use a certified photographer. These are trained and approved by Google and can be found on their website here. (we are certified). Uncertified photographers may get their tour deleted by Google if it fails the quality levels which would be frustrating if you have paid for it.
- You should also get ‘point of interest’ photography of the location included by certified photographers. These are general shots of the building inside and outside.
- The photographer cannot edit photos after the shoot- so unable to make carpets clean or remove bins full of rubbish, so the location needs to be very tidy for the shoot. If it’s Halloween then take decorations down.
- The tours cannot feature people inside the building, so need to be done at a time no customers are present and staff can hide from the cameras.
- Once a tour has been photographed there is quite a lot of work afterwards where the tour is edited together (it doesn’t just happen automatically). So it can take a week or two before it goes ‘live’.
- Finally, once a tour is online to get maximum value a customer needs to share it on social media, embed it on the company website and also feature it as an article in newsletters or even write a press release about it.
A certified Google Street View photographer will guide you every step of the way.
More details about the Google Street View Tours we do can be found on the website here. If you have any questions just call us on 0161 477 5621, email us, or complete the contact form.
Feel free to directly contact any of our customers we have done Google Street View tours for, for a reference. They all appear here.
Author: Jonathan Robinson is the Street View Photographer for Bellyflop.tv and has completed over 50 tours so far.
