Your website is the acquisition channel you have the most direct control over. A handful of well-placed, context-driven links will bring significantly more prospective students straight into your experience at the exact moment intent is highest.
What good looks like
Your Vepple experience is seamlessly integrated into the pages prospective students already visit when they start asking what campus life actually feels like, rather than tucked away on a single, isolated tour page they have to search for.
Principles
Put the link where the question happens: A student reviewing an accommodation page wants to see the rooms, and a student on a course page wants to see the labs, so meet that intent right where they are.
Deep link to specific spaces wherever possible: Avoid sending every visitor to the main campus entrance when linking directly to a relevant subject facility or accommodation tour answers their immediate question much faster.
Plan your link architecture before roll-out: Agreeing on target pages and URLs upfront prevents cross-team handoffs from stalling.
Practical recommendations
Site-wide entry points
Your homepage is prime digital real estate, and a tour CTA needs to justify its presence. Universities that give their virtual campus tour a prominent position consistently see higher visitor numbers entering Vepple.
There are three reliable approaches:
The hero area: Feature the tour CTA right at the top of the page so it's one of the first things students encounter.
Below the main banner: Position the link immediately under the hero banner to keep it easily discoverable without competing against top-level campaign messages.
A dedicated full-width banner: Use dedicated page space to highlight what makes your digital campus experience worth exploring, rather than relying on button text alone.
Your main navigation menu is another valuable, less contested route. Typical locations include "Study with us", "Why choose us", or "Student life" if your tour focuses heavily on campus atmosphere and student community.
Course and subject pages
Prospective students spend substantial time researching course specifics. Linking directly into relevant subject tours helps ground academic details in real physical spaces.
To set this up:
- Open your Vepple platform and navigate to the relevant subject area.
- Select the subject facilities tour and copy that specific URL.
- Add the link to the corresponding course page using clear, action-oriented text like "Explore our facilities: virtual tour".
Apply this same approach across undergraduate and postgraduate study hubs, international landing pages, and "Why study here" content.
Visit and open day pages
Booking forms and open day registrations are essential, but not every student landing on these pages is ready to commit to travelling in person.
Offering your virtual tour gives students a lower-friction way to explore at their own pace. Getting familiar with your campus beforehand builds confidence and an emotional connection, which frequently acts as the stepping stone to an in-person open day registration later.
Using consistent call-to-action phrasing across your site and emails such as "Take a virtual tour" reinforces recognition and builds familiarity across every touchpoint.
Accommodation pages
Accommodation is a major factor in student decision-making, making it one of the most visited sections of any university website:
- Show the living space early: Prospective students want to visualise where they will live, whether the halls are university-managed or provided through private partners.
- Connect your content: Accommodation marketing often sits with a separate team who may manage their own photography or 360 media, so ensuring these spaces are incorporated into your main Vepple experience keeps the student journey joined up.
Clearing pages
During Clearing, prospective students make rapid decisions with limited time to visit in person. Bringing Vepple links directly into your Clearing landing pages, course availability lists, and digital campaign hubs gives students instant reassurance about campus culture and facilities when they need it most.
Embedding content in your pages
Embedding lets you bring interactive 360 panoramas and guided tours directly into your existing web pages, giving students an immediate preview without leaving the page. Adding a CTA button below the embed turns that preview into an invitation into the full experience.
- Use the inbuilt Vepple CTA: When setting up your embeds, use the native Vepple CTA button so both your team and our Customer Success team can track engagement and conversion data in your Performance Dashboard, allowing us to benchmark performance and share optimisation recommendations.
- Learn more: To get embeds configured, take a look at our guide on Guided Tour Embeds, or explore the Embeds overview on our website.
Planning your link placements
Auditing and deploying links across an institutional website can involve dozens of pages and multiple stakeholders.
To keep your roll-out structured, use our simple link planning spreadsheet. Make a copy by heading to File > Make a copy in the template sheet to map your priority URLs before briefing web editors.
Common mistakes
- Sending every student to the front door: Dropping an engineering applicant into the campus entrance forces them to hunt for the labs they care about.
- Relying exclusively on a digital prospectus: Prospectuses provide broad overviews, but embedding immersive links directly into live course and accommodation pages meets students at the point of highest intent.
- Using custom buttons that bypass tracking: Replacing the native Vepple CTA prevents click-through data from feeding into your Performance Dashboard, making it harder to track ROI and benchmark results.
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