Maximizing Your Matterport Digital Twin: A Guide

A Matterport digital twin is more than a virtual tour; it is a versatile digital asset that can be used in numerous ways to support marketing, sales, and operations. This guide provides a practical, step-by-step overview of the key techniques to get the most value from your investment.

1. Embed Your Tour (The Right Way) with a Facade

Embedding the tour on your website is essential, but doing it correctly is critical for performance. A standard iframe embed can slow down your page load times, negatively impacting user experience and SEO. The professional solution is to use an iframe facade.

A facade loads a lightweight preview image first. The heavy Matterport tour itself only loads after the user clicks the "play" button. This respects user data and significantly improves your page's Core Web Vitals.

Step-by-Step Facade Implementation:

1. Create a Placeholder Image: Take a high-quality screenshot of your tour's starting view. This will be your facade image.
2. Add the HTML: Structure your embed with a container, the iframe (with data-src instead of src), and a button to act as the facade.

   <!-- The background-image on the wrapper is optional -->
   <div class="video-wrapper tour-embed">
       <iframe data-src="https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=YOUR_ID"></iframe>
       <button class="map-facade" aria-label="Load 3D Tour">
           <span class="material-icons-outlined">tour</span>
           <p>Explore 3D Tour</p>
       </button>
   </div>

3. Let JavaScript Handle the Rest: The site's main script.js file already contains the necessary code to make this facade functional. No extra JavaScript is needed.

2. Customize the User Experience with URL Parameters

URL parameters are simple snippets added to the end of your Matterport link to control its behavior. They allow you to create tailored experiences for different audiences.

A word of caution: Avoid using autoplay (&play=1) on your main website. It can consume significant data unexpectedly, which is a poor experience for users on mobile networks, especially in a market like India.

Deep Linking: To send a user to a specific viewpoint within your tour (e.g., to highlight a particular artifact in a museum), navigate to that spot in the tour and press the "U" key on your keyboard. This will copy a deep link URL to your clipboard that you can share.

3. Repurpose Your Scan into a Content Library

Your 3D scan is a content engine. Don't limit it to just the tour.

• 4K Still Photos: While in the tour, use Photo Mode (press 'F9') to capture unlimited high-resolution images. These are perfect for creating engaging carousels on Instagram or detailed image galleries on your website.
• Video Walkthroughs: Use the "Create a video" feature in your Matterport account to automatically generate a smooth video from your highlight reel. This is the ideal format for sharing on video-centric platforms like YouTube and Facebook. As an example, we do this for many clients on our YouTube channel.
• Google Street View: The 360° panoramic photos from your scan can be published to your Google Business Profile. Let a professional handle this to ensure seamless connections and compliance with Google's policies.

4. Advanced Features: Overlays, Merging, and Privacy

For more specific needs, there are advanced techniques available:

• Third-Party Overlays: Services like Captur3d, 3DVista, or MPEmbed can add custom branding, menus, and forms on top of your tour. However, be cautious: these overlays add another layer of code that can significantly increase load times and cause lag, especially on mobile devices in regions with variable network speeds. For a smooth experience, the direct my.matterport.com link is always the most reliable.
• Analytics & ROI: It's crucial to understand that neither Matterport nor third-party overlays can provide sales or lead conversion data with the accuracy of Google Analytics. To measure the tour's ROI, a web developer should use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to track events like clicks on "Contact Us" links within Mattertags.
• Model Merging: If you have multiple scans of adjacent spaces, they can often be merged into a single model. This can help reduce Matterport hosting costs. You can attempt this yourself in your account or ask a service provider like Adostrophe to assist.
• Privacy and Edits: A professional service includes ensuring all recognizable faces and license plates (even seen through windows) are blurred. For our direct clients, we offer free lifetime edits, which includes updating Mattertags, extracting new images, or performing model merges.