The Hunan Gardens bar and restaurant in downtown St. Paul has taken a pounding in the past couple of years because of light-rail construction, which often reduced foot traffic to a trickle.
Now, the Chinese eatery is hoping for some measure of salvation online — courtesy of Google.
That Internet giant quietly has been posting interactive tours of Twin Cities businesses such as Hunan Gardens for the past few years so that potential customers can visit virtually before they do so physically.
The online tours are much like the well-known Google Maps Street View service, which allows Web users to virtually travel roadways worldwide via a succession of overlapping, panoramic photos. Embedded, clickable navigation arrows point the way.
The indoor service, called Google Maps Business Photos, has a similar approach. Computer users can click or tap the same kinds of navigation arrows to do virtual walkabouts of a restaurant, toy store or auto-repair shop. Grander facilities, such as the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, are also part of this program.
Now Google is marketing the service to local businesses that in turn want to market themselves. Local photographers are getting into the act as well.
Hunan Gardens manager Charlotte King said she is delighted with the business’s Internet tour, which provides wide-angle, simple-to-pan views of the establishment’s bright-red wall hangings, ornate place settings and other touches that are unique in downtown St. Paul.
“If people are looking for good Chinese food, they can see that we are here and see what we look like inside,” King said.
The Google Maps Business Photos do not have Street View-level buzz yet but are becoming more commonplace. Google says about 100,000 businesses around the world now use the navigable imagery on their Google business pages, as well as on their own sites.
The interactive tours have been known to pay off for small businesses.
Amy Saldanha, owner of the Kiddywampus toy store in St. Louis Park, remembers a couple of times when customers came in the door and she asked them if they were first-timers.
Yep, they said.
She asked them if they needed assistance finding their way around the somewhat convoluted store, which includes a party area down a long hallway in what used to be an auto dealership.
Nope, they replied.
It turned out the customers had spent a good chunk of time wandering the store via its Google interactive tour before heading out for an in-person visit. They had the business’ layout down.
In one such case, parents had shown the tour to their kids, who “got excited,” Saldanha said.
The tour “gives customers a chance to see a bit of our personality online,” she added. “Oh my gosh, I wish we had done this sooner.”
Google has assembled a network of self-employed photographers who work for the company on a contract basis (bitly.com/googleshooters).
The photographers, based in cities around the nation, are responsible for selling the concept to businesses and arranging for interactive tours to be photographed for fees they designate.
They then will use Google-approved equipment, including a fish-eye lens, to snap panoramic pictures in four directions, over and over, in spot after spot, until the establishment is visually documented in full.
Finally, the photographers choose the best photos and make adjustments before feeding the images to a Google server, which has software that stitches the shots together into the tours.
Google Maps Business Photos has become a nice side business for a number of Twin Cities pro shooters. These include Sally Weleczki-Cmiel, a Minneapolis child-portrait specialist who is responsible for the Kiddywampus virtual tour, among others.
“I love being able to meet the business owners and really help them to showcase their places the best way they can,” Weleczki-Cmiel said.
The Google program has become such a solid part of her Monkhouse Photography portfolio that her spouse, graphic designer Greg Cmiel, is going through the lengthy, grueling training program to become Google Maps-certified as well.
No one is more pumped about Google Maps Business Photos than Edward Fink, a Shoreview photographer with a long history of shooting and selling 360-degree panoramas. Many of these are posted on his BigEyeInTheSky.com site.
Google panoramas differ little in the technical sense from panoramas he has posted to the Web for more than a decade, but Fink adores the Google variety because “they are so much easier to sell.
“The Google name opens up doors for you,” said Fink, who likes to demonstrate panoramas to prospects on a Google Nexus 7 tablet. “Everyone knows Street View — and when you say this is an indoor version of Street View, people perk up and pay attention.”
Fink this week is embarking on Google-panorama shooting of the recently remodeled Union Depot in downtown St. Paul. He calls the project his biggest ever.
“It certainly won’t be record-setting,” he said. “Some people have done huge multi-level stores, malls and college campuses.”
Fink is responsible for the Basilica of St. Mary virtual tour, along with more-modest ones such as the Computer Revolution store in Roseville.
Store owner Mark Sommerfeld said he was skeptical about the concept when Fink cold-called him about it. Now he is delighted since Google Maps is second only to the Dex directory in the referrals he receives — and “Google is free,” he said.
Yet not everyone is completely sold on Google Maps Business Photos.
One of the contract shooters, Dan Baker of Plymouth-based Baker Imaging and Photography, doesn’t believe Google gives photographers enough support once their training is completed.
Google “just tosses the photographers out there,” Baker said. “That is why a lot of them drop out. If you’re going to succeed in this program, it’s more about your marketing and sales skills than about photography.
And “selling anything today isn’t easy,” he said.
GOOGLE MAPS BUSINESS PHOTOS
What is it? Think an indoor version of Google Maps Street View, with the same ability to navigate series of overlapping photographs via clickable arrows.
Instead of virtually traveling on roadways, however, you are touring a business, with the ability to pan around (upward, downward and to the left and right) with your mouse or finger. It’s almost like being there in person.
How do I use it? You’ll stumble on local companies’ interactive tours via those organizations’ Google business pages (click where it says “See Inside” on the page) or their own websites.
To find such interactive panoramas on your own, pull up a Google map of your neighborhood and close in nice and tight.
Use your mouse to grab “Pegman,” the tiny orange stick figure found on all Google maps, and drag him around. Orange dots will appear on the map as you do this.
Drop the little targeting circle under Pegman onto one of those dots and a panorama of a local business should appear.
Want this for my business? Contact a local Google-authorized photographer who will shoot photos of your establishment. The images are stitched together to create one of the navigable panoramas. You can find a full list of photographers in your state at bitly.com/googleshooters.
