Tours guides allow you to create an audio tour in your guide, along with the full suite of Guidebook features. Through an audio tour, you can take your users on a predetermined path through your campus, venue, or location, whether they are onsite, or visiting virtually.
You can have multiple tours in one guide. This is a great way to give your users options, for example, a longer or shorter tour, or to showcase other locations around your campus or venue. You're able to add in audio at each tour stop, photos to show parts of the building or area, and include a long-form description with links to videos and websites.
The tours feature cannot be added to an existing guide; you must purchase a Tours guide in order to take advantage of this functionality. Please reach out to your account manager or to sales@guidebook.com for more information.
Setting Up Your Tour - The Basics
Once you've purchased a Tours guide, you'll have access to the Audio Tour feature within the guide in Builder. In addition to working on your tour, adding other features to your guide is important so your users have a complete experience. Click Add features to your guide in the upper-right to select other features.
The Audio Tour feature should exist in your guide by default. If you remove the feature or need to add an additional tour, reach out to your account manager, or support@guidebook.com for assistance.
When you click into the Audio Tour feature, you'll see three tabs: Map, Basics, and Settings.
The Settings tab contains general settings about the feature, and in the Basics tab, you'll set tour information.
This includes the tour name, a cover image, and a description for your tour. The only required field is the tour name.
You can also choose to add a concluding message and concluding actions. These will show when a user completes the tour.
The concluding actions are buttons that direct users to different parts of your guide. You can select any two features in your guide as concluding actions. Popular concluding actions are directing users to your photo album, a form to complete after the tour, or a website for the user to request information or apply to your program. The number of times the concluding actions buttons are tapped is recorded in your metrics panel. An example of concluding actions on mobile is below.
Building Your Tour
Add a Starting Location
From the Map tab, when you're beginning a tour, enter a starting location:
Add New Stops
To add new stops, click Add new Stop from the top right of the page. Click on the map to drop a pin on the stop.
Add Stop Information
Below the map, your stop will appear. Tap on the name of the stop below the map, or click on the pin itself, to edit the stop title, images, description, and upload or record audio.
Title: This is the title of your stop.
Image: The main image on the left will be the first image users see for that stop. You can add up to nine additional images which can be captioned. The main image should be 750 px wide × 750 px tall. We recommend 750 px square at a maximum for the additional images, though they do not need to be square. You can sort the images in the order you'd like them to appear by dragging and dropping.
Description: We suggest adding a transcript of your audio in the description field so that your tour is ADA compliant. You can use the formatting tools to modify the formatting and input links to websites or videos, or switch to the HTML editor by clicking the code button, which is represented by two angle brackets.
Audio: In the audio section, you can upload an MP3 file or record directly in Builder. The audio must be 20 MB or smaller. If you're having trouble converting your audio file to an MP3 format, please reach out to us at support@guidebook.com for assistance.
You may also delete a stop from this overlay in the upper-right. After making changes, scroll down to click Save in the bottom-right. Refer to our content guidelines section, below, for additional best practices for your images and audio.
You can repeat the above process to add new stops. By default, Builder will draw an auto-path between your stops that adheres to the streets on the map. If you'd like to alter the walking path, click, hold, and drag the dots.
Auto-path
You can disable auto-pathing, and our system will instead draw a straight line between locations. Click on the blue line between paths to add dots to the route. You may then click, hold, and drag the dots to alter the walking path between stops.
Making Edits
If you need to change the order of stops, you can drag and drop the stops around from the stop names list. Hover over the stop you'd like to move until you see the move pointer, click and hold, and drag the stop to the correct order.
If you need to edit the walking path, hold and drag the white dots to create the walking path you'd like. If you need extra white dots, you can click on a line to add new dots.
Anytime you need to make changes to the stop name, images, description, or audio, click on the stop name or the pin on the map, edit as needed, and click Save. If your guide is available for download, you'll need to publish updates to your guide to see any changes you've made to your tour.
Guidelines for Success
Audio Guidelines:
- Audio clips work best when kept between one and three minutes long.
- Showcase your tour guide's experience and humor, just like a traditional tour.
- Avoid phrases like “off to our left is Harris Hall” or “straight ahead is the Oak Building”. Your users may be facing a different direction than you would expect, or they may be viewing your tour remotely. Instead, use language like “across the street is Harris Hall,” and “next to the fountain is the Oak Building”.
- Give your users clear directions on where to stand during the audio assuming they are onsite: “If you're on campus for this tour, as you enter Harris Hall, keep walking until you're standing on the university seal. Then, face the staircase.”
- Provide concise instructions about how to walk between stops: “Assuming you are onsite, we'll walk through the rest of the lobby, exit the rear doors, and turn left to continue to the Oak Building”.
Picture Guidelines:
- The main picture works best at 750 px by 750 px. The other pictures should not be larger than that.
- The main picture should highlight the stop and minimize the number of people in the frame. If there are people in the picture, make sure they're not looking at the camera.
- The main picture should give students confidence that they are standing in the right place. For example, if your tour leads users to the side entrance of a building, the picture should show the side entrance, not the front entrance or the interior.
- Adding as many additional pictures as you can is encouraged, as it gives users more visuals.
- Alternate pictures should be used to show parts of the building they may not be able to access, like a lab or classroom.
- Additional pictures can also be used to show buildings at different times of year.
- You can provide a short text description for each of the alternate pictures to provide more context. The text will show as a caption below the image. For example, “Students taking Chemistry labs at SGM experiment with endothermic reactions”.
You can use tour metrics to determine how many tours were started by users, how many users tapped on concluding actions, geographic regions depicting where users started tours, and the average number of destinations visited by users per tour. The metrics can help determine changes you may want to make in terms of tour promotion, number of stops, and content of stops.
Taking a Tour
To take a tour from your mobile device, open the app and guide, open the navigation menu, and find the audio tour you'd like to take. When you tap Begin tour, select Yes, I'm there or No, I'm remote based on your current location. You'll receive the same tour information either way, the selection determines whether the app uses your GPS system (if you're onsite), or zooms in on a static map to orient you (if you're remote).
At each stop, you can listen to the audio by playing it through the speaker of your device, using headphones, or, if you're onsite, holding your device up to your ear. The audio tour is bluetooth compatible. You can also choose to scroll through the description text along with, or instead of, listening to the audio.
To view additional pictures, tap on the main picture, and scroll right to left. Tap the Done in the upper-right to go back to the main view.
During the tour, if you'd like to view the tour map overall, or exit the tour, click the walking person icon in the upper right.
The list view icon below the walking person, allows you to skip to a different stop.
When you finish the tour, you'll likely see a message and one or two buttons. The creator of the audio tour may ask for more information, direct you to their website, or suggest you view another part of the guide.