“This recent article provides a fresh (and visual) review of the most popular e-commerce platforms. If your store requires the ability to offer thousands of products, and expand; these are some of the proven players.”

– Mark Ingraham, Image Perspective

The following article written by:  ecommerce-platforms.com

In a market as saturated as the ecommerce platform market, it can be very difficult to figure out which shopping cart software best meets your needs. If you are considering starting your own store, then chances are you have already run into this struggle at some point. So far I have reviewed most popular platforms as individual offers, and created this comparison chart, then ranked all platforms after their SEO effectiveness, but now it is time to see how the different platforms compare to each other: Shopify, Bigcommerce, 3dcart, Volusion and Big Cartel.

In case you’re in a hurry, here are some links to our top ecommerce platforms for you to choose from:

Ecommerce Platform	Logo
Shopify
Bigcommerce
Volusion
Big Cartel
3dcart

Which of These Platforms is Most Popular?

If you’ve searched for a platform to run your ecommerce store, you’ve no doubt stumbled upon at least a few of the names we’re comparing today. Although popularity isn’t exactly the best motivating factor to make a decision that will affect your future business life, it’s certainly worth talking about, considering when large groups of people lean to a certain solution, we like to hope that it’s for a reason.

That said, if you take a look at a comparison on Google trends, Shopify is the clear winner in terms of what people are searching and how many people are showing interest in the five popular consumer solutions.

The 3dcart platform is, and has always been, at the bottom in terms of trending on Google. It’s interesting to point out that Bigcommerce has made a recent surge past the previous second place contender Big Cartel, and we’re certain it has to do with many of the changes Bigcommerce has implemented over the past few years.

Hence, for popularity – or maybe because the Shopify pricing – this is the dominant company, which can also show that the their marketing team is probably a little stronger, or they have more money, so although you shouldn’t make a decision based primarily on popularity, I would argue there’s a reason Shopify is king and Bigcommerce is slowly on the rise.

Another way to analyze popularity is to tie it in with where customers are going when they leave a certain ecommerce platform. The reason this is interesting is because it gives you an indicator of which of the companies have kept up with technologies and made improvements to bring in additional customers. A quick market share search on Shopify shows that the Shopify company is gaining most of its customers from Big Cartel and Volusion, but Shopify is losing most of its customers to Bigcommerce, an indicator that Bigcommerce is gunning for Shopify with its new features and marketing efforts.

Ease of use

If you are a novice online store owner, then there is really nothing as important as ease of use. It doesn’t matter if the platform offers the most amazing features, if you don’t understand how to use them, then they might as well not even be there.

One thing that all of the platforms have in common is the fact that their dashboards are all very easy to navigate. Furthermore, most of the platforms offer some sort of a setup wizard that will guide you through the creation of your first store. Inventory management, design functionality and the setup process all tie into how the overall ease of use is classified in this article.

Shopify

Shopify has it all in terms of an easy setup, with a handy dashboard area for quickly adding products, customizing the look of your site and more. It’s cool because Shopify asks you if you plan on moving from another platform during the signup process. The system then provides a link for importing products from your previous store. In the screenshot below you can see that Shopify is helping me move from a Magento store.

Adding a product is clear and easy, with fields for titles, descriptions, price and more. The reason I think this is easier to use than Volusion and the other options is because it explains what each field is used for, removing all doubt when typing in information.

TRY SHOPIFY

Volusion

We talked a little bit about ease of use with Volusion above, but it’s worth noting that the company has a fairly clean product creation area. It might not be as pretty as Shopify, but it does the trick. The big problem is when you need to go back in and change the layout or design of your pages, since coding knowledge is almost a requirement.

TRY VOLUTION

3dcart

The 3dcart product setup page is the oldest looking of the bunch. It’s not that the module is confusing, but the junky design makes you wonder if they’ve updated it in a while.

However, 3dcart offers wonderful tutorials and setup steps to help you do everything from picking a template to setting up your shipping options. The clean wizard is ideal for beginners.

A 3dcart benefit is the drag and drop editor, which is not exactly the best on the market, but it helps you click and drag components instead of having to modify CSS or HTML code. If you’re a beginner without any design experience, this is a huge advantage, since you don’t have to settle for the preset template designs, and it doesn’t require you to go in there and modify any code for a simple adjustment.

TRY 3DCART

Big Cartel

Big Cartel offers the least visually-friendly startup area, since it’s not apparent what you should do right when you land on the page, and for some reason the text doesn’t really stand out that much.

Big Cartel lacks a drag and drop editor like you would find in 3dcart, but the customization isn’t the worst thing in the world. All of your design elements are situated to the left, which is fine, but the tools are a little weak, and anything further than that requires coding knowledge.

TRY BIG CARTEL

Bigcommerce

Next to Shopify, Bigcommerce has the cleanest dashboard and clearest directions for getting your site built within a few minutes. In fact, the dashboard looks surprisingly similar to Shopify, with modules for accepting credit cards, customizing your store and more.

Coding options are available in Bigcommerce, and the design features are quite handy, but I’d still rather have a drag and drop editor, which has not made its way to the Bigcommerce platform yet.

TRY BIGCOMMERCE

Pricing

For many people pricing is the most important factor, not only when deciding which ecommerce platform to use, but in general as they go through life. Personally, I feel if you are going to be investing a lot of your time and energy into creating your own online retail space, then there should be more important factors than saving $1 on the price of the platform.

As you can see in the table above, the cheapest plan offered on any of the platforms is without competition offered on Big Cartel, this package doesn’t cost a single dime. In general when looking at the pricing of Big Cartel you can see that even their most expensive plan costs as much as the cheapest plan with Shopify or BigCommerce.

When you look at the cheapest pricing tier, if you ignore Big Cartel, then you can see that Volusion offers the cheapest plan, while 3dcart comes in second, finally the two most popular platforms Shopify and Bigcommerce both charge around $30 for their services.

When you compare the middle pricing packages you can quickly see that there seems to be some sort of agreement that the price should be somewhere between $65 and $80.

For me what it really comes down is whether you are looking to sell just a few products or a large number of products, as well as which platforms offers the features you want for a reasonable price.

It’s also worth mentioning Shopify is best for those stores that plan on scaling up quick, since it provides the functionality to really handle large amounts of traffic and turn your site into something special.

Be warned that Bigcommerce has made some recent changes with its pricing structure, making it difficult for companies to scale up with the system. If you start to make more than $125,000 in revenue, Bigcommerce pretty much forces you to switch to an Enterprise plan. According to our reports from readers, this spikes your rates up to around $900 to $1,500 per month. It’s still unclear how this will affect those businesses who plan on remaining in the lower tiered pricing plans, but one thing is certain: Customers that surpass certain revenue points are not happy with Bigcommerce. We would put them on the bottom of our list if your company will end up with one of the most expensive plans.

That said, if you need a simple, small store, the cheaper Volusion or Big Cartel solutions work just fine.

Templates

Let’s be honest: design matters, everyone knows if the design doesn’t appeal to the visitor then chances are they will take their shopping elsewhere. Remember what I said in one of the reviews, if the layout of your store looks horrible then even if your product is amazing, chances are people won’t pay attention to your products.

If you are looking for a platform that offers some of the most professional looking themes, then you should really be looking into Shopify, the truth is there is no platform that offers better themes than Shopify.

Compared to Shopify and Bigcommerce, the collection of themes offered by 3dcart or Big Cartel shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same sentence. In fact, Bigcommerce themes are pretty remarkable, and as of March 23, 2016, around 67 new and responsive themes are being released for $145 to $235. You can find them in the theme store, and they were developed to establish a more modern, fluid user experience, utilizing cool new merchandising features for categorization and different sized catalogs.

While 3dcart does offer a lot of themes, when you look closer you realize most of these themes are duplicates. Not to mention, the 3dcart themes aren’t exactly modern looking. In fact, one could argue that some of the themes look like they come from the 1990s, with fixed layouts, weird colors and cluttered interfaces.

Big Cartel on the other hand only offers a grand total of nine themes (seen below). This is unacceptable, since unique branding is a huge part of selling online. In addition, the theme shop is only displayed in a small area to the left of where you modify your website, making it near impossible to view details on each theme or even see what the finished products would look like.

While you might think that the number of themes offered by a platform isn’t such a big deal. You need to remember that if your store lacks originality, such as having the same theme as 50 other stores, then customers are quick to attribute this to poor quality management from the store owner. This is much more likely to make them leave your site without even giving you a fair shot.

Apps and Add-ons

If you are looking for a platform that offers a large selection of apps and add-ons then you should really go with Shopify or Bigcommerce, both companies offer more than 100 different apps and add-ons that can easily be integrated into your store. Another solution would be to sign up with 3cart who also offers access to apps and add-ons, however, they do not offer as many as Shopify or Bigcommerce.

Another thing to keep in mind is how easy it is to search for the apps and add-ons, considering you probably have a few items in mind that you want to add to your store. Maybe you need an automated email receipt solution or an app that helps you build a loyalty program. With Shopify and Bigcommerce you can search, filter and browse through categories when in need of a certain app. The other ecommerce solutions either make it super hard to do so, or you don’t have the functionality at all.

If access to additional apps and add-ons are important then I don’t recommend signing up with either Volusion or Big Cartel. The first company offers a grand total of one app, while the latter doesn’t offer any apps at all.

Customer Support

Chances are you will need support at some point in your ecommerce career, it is therefore important to be familiar with the different support offers from the companies.

Shopify and 3dcart both offer 24/7 support through phone as well as chat and email. Bigcommerce offers 24/7 email and chat support, however, their phone support comes with time constraints.

The one company who doesn’t seem to offer phone or chat support would be Big Cartel who only offers email support, and what’s more they only offer it Monday – Friday from 9AM to 6PM EST.

So if you are looking for a company that offers great customer support any time of the day, then you really should give Shopify and 3dcart a try.

All of the solutions we’re talking about have knowledge bases, which basically let you search a topic and see if someone else has talked about it and addressed it in the past. In my opinion, this is one of the best support areas you can find, since it allows you to resolve a problem while maybe sitting on the phone waiting for a support rep.

Even though they all have these knowledge bases, along with blogs, FAQs and other documentation, Shopify and BigCommerce have the most users, making them far superior in terms of knowledge base content. Why is this the case? Simple. Since more people are discussing the systems, by default, more questions have been asked and more answers have been posted.

More head to head comparisons

Volusion vs Shopify

Magento vs Volusion

Volusion vs Magento

Shopify vs Magento

Shopify vs Volusion

Shopify vs Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce vs Shopify

Concluding remarks

It really doesn’t matter how many comparison articles you read, there is only one person who knows which platform offers exactly what you need, and that person is you. What it all boils down to is which platform will allow you to sell the products you offer in the best manner for both you as a store owner and for your clients.

Based on the recommendations you read above, feel free to click on one, or all of the links below to discover what each platform offers you. I highly recommend starting a free trial with at least two of the solutions so that you can play around with them and see which one feels easiest for you.

Ecommerce Platform	Logo
Shopify
Bigcommerce
Volusion
Big Cartel
3dcart

With that being said however, I think there are a few factors you need to take into consideration before making your final decision. In order to make the decision a little easier I will break this conclusion down into quick paragraphs about each of the platforms.

Shopify (full review here)

There is a reason why Shopify is at the top of the comparison chart. Not only does the company offer some amazing features, but the themes they offer are also top notch. I wouldn’t have a problem recommending this platform to anyone looking to get started in the ecommerce industry.

Bigcommerce (full review here)

The differences between Bigcommerce and Shopify are rather subtle, there are some features offered by this platform that Shopify doesn’t offer and vice versa. If you don’t mind a bit of a learning curve then perhaps this offer is the right platform for you.

Volusion (full review here)

When deciding whether to use Volusion or not, it really comes down to one very simple decision. Do you feel comfortable editing the HTML and CSS code in order to optimize your template, if this isn’t a problem, then Volusion might be the right platform for you, otherwise I would really suggest looking at Shopify or Bigcommerce.

3dcart (full review here)

3dcart doesn’t offer as many features as Shopify or Bigcommerce, however, their platform is very user-friendly. One problem I do have with this company however is the fact that they offer a limited number of original themes, as I mentioned earlier many of their themes are duplicates.

Big Cartel (full review here)

Big Cartel might not offer some of the features offered by their competitors, however, as I mentioned in the review, it feels as if they are catering towards a different set of customers. If you are looking to sell a few products to your clients and do not need all the features offered by competitors, then I would really consider giving Big Cartel a try.

If you are still uncertain about which platforms best fits your needs, then every company offers a free trial, and my suggestion is that you give these a shot before making your final decision. You can also read the individual reviews for each and for a more visual way of comparing them I suggest taking a look at my top 10 comparison chart.

Can you help me to create a shop using Shopify / Magento / WooCommerce / etc?

Yes I do work with experts in each of these shopping carts. Please fill out this form to make sure I will be able recommend you the right people to work with.

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“Best use of a Mike Tyson quote in a Disaster Recovery discussion yet this year. Well done!”

– Patrick Torney – eDot

The following article written by: Phil Muncaster, Info Security

A serious cybersecurity incident can hit an organization like a punch in the face, forcing IT teams out of their comfort zone even if they have a pre-formed response plan, according to a leading infosec boss.

Vicki Gavin, head of business continuity and information security at The Economist Group, claimed in a panel debate today that infosecurity leaders must deal with missing and incorrect data when an attack strikes.

Quoting Mike Tyson’s famous “everyone has a plan ‘til they’re punched in the mouth” remark, she explained that incident response teams must still find a way to make the best decisions they can.

To ensure they stand the best chance of success, IT security bosses must ensure “every single person knows what to do,” via repeated training and exercises, she added.

“Something bad will happen. I don’t know what or when it will happen. It doesn’t matter how high I build my walls the cyber-criminals will get through,” argued Gavin.

Instead of entering a cyber arms race in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the black hats, Gavin ‘s preventative strategy is to ensure staff form the first line of defense against attacks. Hacktivists trying to gain access to systems via phishing attacks are among the biggest threats to the publisher, she added.

To train staff in how to spot such attacks, she ran a five-week competition with the incentive of a prize for those who performed well.

“Once people know something you can count on them knowing it forever,” Gavin claimed.

It’s a position slightly at odds with experts sitting on a similar panel yesterday, which argued that awareness raising doesn’t always change behavior.

CISO Andrew Rose claimed that despite knowing the health risks, many of us continue to smoke – an analogy which neatly illustrates how awareness raising isn’t always effective in achieving the outcomes you want.

Other experts on the panel debate today have different ways of dealing with user training programs – proving that IT bosses must choose the best fit for their organization.

Vodafone has run quirky, viral-style comedy videos to educate staff, according to the firm’s global head of cyber defense, Andy Talbot, while ING Wholesale Bank CISO, Hem Pant, claimed he’s using gamification techniques.

Talbot advised security bosses to get the basics right – things like patching, vulnerability scanning and tightening access controls – and to try to be more proactive and adaptive in their approaches to match an increasingly agile foe.

He added that sometimes innovative data scientists can be brought in to help track threat info – even if they don’t have a background in information security.

Other advice from the panel – echoed throughout the show – is to engage PR, legal and other teams now so that everyone knows their role and is ready to jump into action when an attack strikes home.

Learn More about eDot.

“Marketing via Virtual Reality; we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. Mbryonic shares how marketers are applying the technology today.”

– Mark Ingraham, Image Perspective

The following article written by:  mybryonic

As of April 2016, people that succeed with Virtual Reality (VR) Marketing do two things very well:

First, they identify VR Marketing narratives that get them results.

Second, they put 100% of their resources into creating the stories that resonate with their audience.

But you’re probably wondering:

“How do I find VR Marketing strategies that actually work?”

Well, today we’re going to make it easy for you.

All you need to do is carve out a few minutes of your day and look over the 10 Best Uses Of Virtual Reality In Marketing.

Here’s why VR Marketing campaigns are so successful:

VR solves a huge problems marketers have around engagement and awareness for the following reasons:

• Immersive – users wearing a headset are completely immersed in the content meaning fewer distractions and more attention on the message.
• Impactful – the intensity of a VR experience is greater than traditional media generating strong emotions in its users which are linked to real behaviour change.
• Memorable – our brains are built to remember events linked to locations, this means that VR experiences have a longer trace in the audience’s memory.
• Novel – with high media and public interest in VR early adopters can benefit from favourable media exposure.

You’ll learn today the how the best marketing campaigns use VR to create successful campaigns. Here’s our video that shows you exclusive footage from each campaign and it showcases what you can learn from each campaign. Keep scrolling to see our write up of each one.

The 10 Best Uses of Virtual Reality in Marketing Video:

Because we also have extensive write-ups below detailing why each campaign was a success. Be sure to bookmark this page and come back to it for your research.

10. Coca Cola’s Santa’s Virtual Reality Sleigh Ride

Last Christmas, Coca Cola created a virtual reality sleigh ride. Using Oculus Rift, thousand of people all over Poland were immersed in this virtual world and were Santa Claus for a day! It is like a roller coaster ride but you are Santa Claus flying over the country and into different villages.

Why we picked it:

Coca-Cola is a major brand and they’ve been experimenting with Virtual Reality for quite a while now. Coca-Cola is always striving to be new and fresh and this was a perfect opportunity for them. This sleigh ride was a great way to show their modern brand through the use of VR. It introduced people in Poland to virtual reality and help them better experience the joy of Christmas.

9. McDonald’s Happy Meal VR Headset and Ski App

Through their Happy Meal Box, McDonald has released their own Google Cardboard. They’re doing a trial run in Sweden where the happy meal toy is a McDonald’s Cardboard VR Headset. In this case, it’s helping people turn happy boxed into happy people. Slope Stars is the game that comes with the goggles. It’s tied to a Swedish recreational holiday that centres on skiing.

Why we picked it:

McDonald has an enormous reach all over the world. They are legends of marketing. This new promotional strategy helps utilise their happy meal box and repurpose it as a “Happy Goggle.” The reusability is very cool. And they’re providing extra entertainment with their app to their customers making this a great campaign.

8. Michelle Obama’s VR Video

The Whitehouse invited The Verge to do a video on Michelle Obama’s success with social media. She talks about her efforts to popularise healthy eating and exercise. The 10-minute video is a 360 video that has After Effects like animation on it to help illustrate Michelle’s point. The video is the best VR infographic explainer video I’ve ever seen. For marketers reading this right now, if you need to explain a company’s mission or a new service, you’ll definitely want to look into this video and use it as an example.

Why we picked it:

It solves the big problem marketers have with VR. Mainly, how to properly make use of the 360 space and it creates a narrative flow that anyone can follow along with. This is a huge a challenge because it is difficult to capture someone’s attention when they can look anywhere. The Verge creates these infographic pop-ups that guide your attention. And even when you’re not looking at the speaker, they’ll reproduce Michelle’s face on the other side so you can continue to follow the story while exploring the space. This video masterfully engages you on Michelle Obama’s social media story.

7. New York Times – Displaced

War has driven 30 million children from their homes. The New York Times detailed their tragic stories in an immersive documentary that was available to download for mobile app and Google Cardboard. This wasn’t a marketing campaign but the publicity of generated by distributing a million free Google Cardboards to their readers grabbed headlines. The VR studio vrse.works developed Displaced for the NYTVR app.

• Distributed to over 1 million New York Time subscribers
• The Highlight piece of New York Times VR app

Why we picked it

The film did an excellent job at showing the devastating effects of war and put you in the heart of the story. A worthy story and a great marketing move by the NY Times.

6. Boursin – Sensorium

Soft cheese supplier Boursin created a virtual reality experience that takes you on a journey through a fridge full of delightful treats. They hired the marketing agency BecauseXM and Hammerheadvr to deliver the project. Boursin exhibited this in various malls and events around the United Kingdom. Click here to Oculus link to try it for yourself.

• 67,545 YouTube Views
• Winner of Masters of Marketing Award 2015
• 6 City Tour

Why we picked it

It’s quite extravagant for a cheese company and we like it because it sets the bar high. Their exhibit also includes wind jets so you can truly experience this adventure.

5. TopShop – Catwalk Experience

A bit older this one, but still worthy. TopShop offered members of the public a unique front-row view of their exclusive fashion runway show during London Fashion Week using a 360 panoramic video stream.  Lucky competition winners got to experience this in a special pop-up space in TopShop’s flagship London store, providing great visibility. As a bonus, the user could find additional behind the scene footage from within the experience. This experience was created by the London VR studio Inition.

• The experience won ‘Project of the Year‘ at the BT Retail Week Technology Awards 2014
• Best Hybrid Event / Best Virtual Event at the 2014 Event Tech Awards
• 100s of attendees at the event.
• 10 Press articles including Wired and the Times.

Why we picked it

This is a great use of the technology, well executed and one of the very first of these types of experiences for the Oculus. Congrats to the guys at Inition.

4. Volvo – XC90 Test Drive

Test driving a car through virtual reality makes a lot of sense if you don’t have a car dealer close by. It is great to see Volvo make an app to support the launch of their XC90 SUV.  It puts you in the cockpit and takes you on an idyllic ride through the country. The vergewrote that though the experience was a little fuzzy and inaccurate they thought it was clever. This was also done by Framestore VR Studio and you can read their case study for more info here.

• 175k views on YouTube
• 155 Reviews on Google Play with an averaged of 3.6 stars

Why we picked it

We think this is a great move by Volvo – a company that has struggled perhaps to appear modern and relevant compared to their competitors. By adopting VR in this way they’ve made the public look at their brand in a new light. It also might become the standard by which future test driving apps are compared to giving Volvo a first mover advantage in the virtual reality industry.

3. Patron – The Art of Patron

A Tequila company might not be an obvious beneficiary of a VR marketing strategy, but Patron used the power of VR to tell a compelling story around the companies product. Using a mix of live action and computer graphics they created a 360 journey following the product lifecycle from agave field to being served at a glamorous party. The entire production took six months and was developed by creative agency Firstborn, post-production agency Legend and sound design agency Antfood. When Patron does events, they’ll bring a virtual reality set up to show audiences their process.

• 20k Accumulated YouTube Views
• Used Binaural (3D) Audio
• Used a custom built Drone with a 7 GoPro

Why we picked it

This was good because it gives the user an inside look at the process of creating Patron’s Tequila. It’s both entertaining and educational.

2. Merrell – Trailscape

To support the launch of a new hiking boot, the Capra. Merrell created a VR experience called Trailscape that takes you on a dangerous mountain hike. Participants walk along a stage set that is mapped to the virtual experience to create a new level of immersion. The motion capture allowed adventurers to explore the mountainside, with tactile elements such as rope walkways and shaking wooden planks, making this one of the most immersive VR experience to date. Showcased at 2015 Sundance Film Festival, it was the brainchild of Merrell, agency Hill Holliday and Framestore VR Studio. You can read more here.

• First commercial use of “walk around” virtual reality
• 3,750 YouTube Views

Why we picked it

Trailscape does a good job of integrating the brand in a powerful user experience. We really like the fact you can walk around in this demo, which is relevant from the product and also is not something we see often in VR experiences currently. From the reaction of the users they had a memorable time too!

1. Marriott – The Teleporter

Imagine being able to transport yourself to a beach paradise whenever you wanted?

Framestore VR Studio and Relevant partnered with Marriott to create a unique teleportation experience for the public. Framestore VR Studio writes that it’s, “A Revolutionary 4D Tourism experience for Marriott Hotels, that teleports you first to a Marriott Hotel and then to the beach in Hawaii.” Inside a telephone booth-like structure, they used Oculus Rifts, heaters, and wind jets to take users on a trip to Hawaii and London. Whilst it’s not quite the same as actually being there, it might help you decide on your future trips. It also helped Marriott position themselves as a forward looking and relevant brand in the market. For more information, you can view the case study here.

• Toured in 8 cities in the USA
• 100-second sessions

Why we picked it

We liked this because it combines visuals with the other senses, going beyond what it possible by just showing a 360 video. Whilst, not a cheap campaign to produce it was successful enough for Marriott to commission a second experience. Showing VR is more than a one-off gimmick but something that can be core to a marketing strategy when used properly.

That’s our list! However, not every campaign made it and below we highlight other campaigns that you can learn from. 

Honourable Mentions:

Immersive VR – Apollo 11 Mission

The Apollo 11 Mission was the iconic mission in 1969 that landed Earth’s first human on the moon. Immersive VR Education decided to educate enthusiasts to re-create this event in virtual reality under the same name. The result is the best history lesson since Crash Course decide to start their amazing YouTube series. The project started on Kickstarter and has now published the final result to its backers.

• Raised €36,623 via Kickstarter Pledges
• Winner of the Time Warner Future of Storytelling Award
• 115K accumulated views on YouTube

Why we picked it

Ok, this isn’t really a marketing application as it was made by fans rather than NASA. But we love it so much we think this is precisely the kind of project an organisation like NASA should be embracing. Education is a big part of marketing and this gets props for the clever integration of education and awe. The use of historical audio throughout the experience sells the authenticity.

Disney – Star Wars

Disney released a 360 VR fly through experience of one of the locations in the new upcoming Star Wars movie. In it you feel like you are inside one of the speeders during an epic battle. This content was also released using Facebook’s new 360 videos feature, which although not technically a VR experience allowed them to reach a wider audience.

• 6.6 Million Views
• 75k Facebook likes
• 237k shares

Why we picked it

To be fair Star Wars probably doesn’t need any help marketing itself but we picked this because it gives users a taste of the movie in a different way than a trailer can. It’s also an intelligent re-use of assets that would have already been created as part of the production of the movie.

Paul McCartney – Live Concert

Jaunt produced a 360 Video Recording of Sir Paul McCartney’s performance at Candlestick Park. You can download the app on iOS or Android to experience the event (spot the 360 camera rig in the right corner of the picture).

• 100,000+ installs on Android
• 1463 Reviews with an average of 4.2 stars on Android

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