FAQs

First and foremost, you have the opportunity to show your potential customers how unique your company and your offer is.

Many people spend several hours on the Internet every day and are very fond of looking at aesthetic images. Pictures that are particularly colorful or show unusual architecture are clicked on particularly often.

In contrast to ordinary images or individual panoramas, a virtual tour is a bundle of several images that are linked together. This means that visitors leave many more clicks since they want to get to know the house / business premises / location. In turn, an increased number of clicks means a better ranking and thus better findability of your company in the Google Maps search. All this leads to higher customer frequency and hopefully to higher sales.

In addition, customer loyalty is strengthened by the increased transparency.

I am mainly in Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Burgenland, Styria and Salzburg. Orders from Carinthia, Tyrol and Vorarlberg are only possible from a certain turnover level due to the high travel costs. The same applies to orders from abroad.

Please note that I use public transport to travel to the recording locations in a very environmentally friendly way!

In the best case, after the initial admission, an order form is filled out, signed and sent to me. Then I confirm the date or we agree on another date. (Strictly speaking, from the time an appointment is confirmed, it is already a fixed transaction or fixed date).

The recordings take place at the agreed place at the agreed time. If the customer would like to take advantage of an advance payment, proof of payment confirmation must be provided before the recording work at the latest.

The recordings or the tour will appear online no later than three days after the shooting. There has never been a delay to date, but it can never be completely ruled out, as this partly depends on Google Maps.

The recordings, including the rights of use, will only be sent to the customer after I received the payment.

The complete virtual tour (as well as all other recordings) will be archived by me for 1 year. This means that during this time the customer can request that the recordings be sent again and that the tour be uploaded again free of charge. For reasons of space, it is unfortunately not possible for me to archive the recordings for longer than one year. Therefore, I would like to ask every customer to keep the recordings carefully.

That depends on how big your company is and how well you prepared for the shoot. I usually need between 40 and 150 minutes per operation.

That depends on many factors. Here are the most important:

Location: Since I have to travel from Vienna by public transport, the location depends on when I can arrive at the earliest and when I have to return to Vienna at the latest. In principle, times between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. are possible.

Customer frequency: It is best to choose a time of day with the lowest number of customers or a day off. Every person who appears in the recordings must be retouched or pixelated (unless this person signs a so-called model release).

Daylight: Every time of day has different daylight intensity. A time of day that does not cause too great a difference in light between the interior and exterior spaces is well suited. Beautiful and special in the winter months are also shots in the so-called blue hour (twilight).

Inform staff and customers in advance.

Tidy up, clean and possibly decorate all indoor and outdoor areas to be photographed.

Ensure that rooms are adequately lit and that the lighting mood corresponds to expectations (cold versus warm light).

Consider the order of the rooms in advance (e.g. in a hotel, a restaurant is best planned between meals, since there are usually no guests in the rooms at these times).

Contact me if you have any questions.

In the case of an advance payment, the customer will receive his pictures no later than 3 days after the recording work. In other case after receiving the agreed payment.

The images/recordings are hosted in a ZIP archive on my server for a week. The customer receives a download link. This link is valid for one week.

According to my terms and conditions, all recordings are archived for one year and can be made available for download again free of charge on request.

The virtual tour should appear online 3 days after the recording work. In exceptional cases, delays may occur due to Google Maps. In this case, however, the individual recordings are still visible, only the connection appears later.

By uploading the virtual tour, the number of visitors to your Google business listing will increase by at least 1000 clicks in the first week. How the visitor rate develops also depends on the previous visitor frequency and the size (5 to 30 panoramas) of the virtual tour.

I am a so-called micro-entrepreneur and am therefore exempt from sales tax within the meaning of § 6 (1) Z 27 UstG. This means that my invoice does not show any sales tax and I also do not have a sales tax number (UID)!

In Austria, the travel costs are included. Please note that orders in Carinthia, Tyrol and Vorarlberg, which take more than 4 hours to arrive from Vienna, must contain a higher order volume (minimum order of €700)

The data is stored on the Google Maps servers. So as long as there is Google Maps, your virtual tours will most likely remain online. If Google Maps makes changes, I can re-upload the tour (your recordings will be archived with me for 1 year, after which I recommend that you back up your own files). From experience I can confirm that the tours remain online for at least 8 years without any problems.

All rights must be observed when recording. This means that people without written consent, car license plates, third-party brand logos and third-party intellectual property must be made unrecognizable.

With the transmission of the recordings you receive the exclusive rights of use to the recordings. This means you can use your recordings however you want, with the exception of selling those recordings for a fee.

The virtual Google Street View Tour is integrated using so-called iframes. An HTML code for the integration will be sent to each customer after payment. This code can also be used for WordPress websites (on WordPress, switch post editing to HTML and paste the code in). The window in which the Google Street View Tour appears can be changed as desired. To do this, only the attributes “width” and “height” have to be changed accordingly.

Please do not forget to add the entry "Google Maps" to your data protection declaration.

If you don't want that, you shouldn't embed the tour, just refer to it with an external link or button.

Alternatively, you can commission an HTML5 web tour from me, which will be individually adapted to your website.

A virtual tour consists of several spherical panoramas (360 degree all-round images) that are connected to each other. The individual panoramas in turn consist of several recordings that have to be linked together (stiching). In addition, these partial images are recorded in 9 different exposure levels in order to achieve a high dynamic range (HDR). This means you get optimal exposure and the final image doesn't have high contrasts between shadows and light sources. The bottom line is that a single panorama consists of 27 to 36 individual images.

Every single panorama has to be retouched after joining. The tripod, which is located at the bottom of the picture, as well as unwanted mirror images are erased. License plates, people (without model release) and brand logos are rendered unrecognizable. Finally, the colors and sharpness are corrected.

The edited recordings must now be combined into a tour. This means that each image has to be assigned to the right place. Using EXIF data, GPS data, viewing direction (north orientation) and levels must be entered. Also, the images must be matched to the correct Google business listing. Then it is determined which panoramas are connected to each other and in which order.

The virtual tour prepared in this way can now be uploaded to the Google Maps server. This is the part that is most challenging because Google algorithms are often overwhelmed and some connections, Google Maps entries and even panoramas are ignored. In this case, it means deleting the entire tour from the Google Maps server and uploading it again. As long and as often as necessary until everything fits. This can sometimes take a few attempts.