360 car spins for online listings: what they are, what they do for a sale, and how to make one with a phone
A 360 spin lets a buyer walk around the car from their phone. What a spin actually is, why it keeps buyers on a listing, how to shoot one on the lot without a turntable, and how to keep it honest.
What a 360 spin is
A 360 spin, or car tour, is a set of frames taken all the way around a car, stitched into a player the buyer can drag left and right. Stop on any angle and it is a still photo of that side of the car. Drag and the car turns. It is the online version of walking the lot, and it answers the question a strip of photos cannot: what does it look like from the angle the dealer did not choose to show?
For years a spin meant a turntable in a studio or a rig of cameras on the forecourt, which is why only the biggest dealer groups had them. That has changed. A slow walk around the car with a phone is now enough.
Why a spin helps sell
Buyers trust what they can inspect. A set of stills asks them to believe nothing was left out between the angles. A spin lets them check, which keeps them on the listing longer and sends them to the viewing with fewer doubts. The buyers who still worry about a corner can stop on it, look, and either move on or ask a specific question.
A spin also makes a listing feel like it was made with care, which, on a results page of near-identical cars at similar prices, is often the difference.
How to shoot a spin on the lot
Park the car with a few metres of clear space all round it. Hold the phone level, sideways, at about headlight height, and walk slowly around the car in one steady loop, keeping the whole car in the frame and the same distance from it the whole way round. Thirty to forty seconds for the loop is about right; faster and the frames blur, slower and you drift in and out. Do it twice if the first loop was shaky. Then upload the clip with the rest of the car's photos.
The common mistakes are the same as for stills: a car that is dirty, a wheel cut off at one corner of the loop, and a phone that drifts up to eye level halfway round so the car seems to sink.
Keep the spin and the photos in the same room
A spin shot on the lot shows the lot: the building behind the car on one side, the street on the other, the sky moving across the paint as you walk round. With Carzbooth the car is taken out of the lot frame by frame and placed in the same studio booth as the still photos, so the listing looks like one shoot in one place rather than two different days.
Tag the marks on the spin
The point of a spin is that the buyer sees everything, so use it to say what they are seeing. Marks on the car can be tagged on the spin: a buyer who stops on a scuff taps it and reads what it is. The same tags point out the things worth noticing, like the wheels or a tow bar. It is the close-up photo and the honest line of description, in the place the buyer is already looking.
A spin must not hide anything
A spin that smoothed out a dent would be worse than no spin, because the buyer would find the dent at the viewing and conclude the rest of the listing was retouched too. Carzbooth applies the same rule to a spin as to a photo: the booth is rebuilt around the car, and the car itself, every panel and every mark, is as it was filmed. See what Carzbooth changes and never touches.
Where a spin can go
On your own website, the spin is a player you embed on the vehicle page. On marketplaces it depends on what each one supports: some show spins, some take a set of frames, some only show stills. The spin can be exported as frames where a site takes them, and the studio stills cover the rest. Our products page has the details.