vAuto has incorporated a 360-degree spin image capturing application allowing dealerships to take photos and videos of a vehicle’s interior and exterior.

vAuto said the application, called SnapLot 360, creates dynamic listing content for online car buyers.

The application includes features that vAuto says can provide a more immersive shopping experience for customers. Those include exterior 360 capture, interior 360 capture and hot spot tagging.

The hot spot tagging feature uses stencils to guide dealerships to specific features in the photos and automatically tags them as hot spots.

According to vAuto, that can provide a more visual and informative vehicle detail page.

The SnapLot 360 merchandising tool is located within vAuto Conquest and Provision, and dealerships are using it to bring online engagement and boost potential sales by improving customers’ shopping experience as they continue to rely on new online shopping tools and services to research and compare vehicles.

Dealerships can use SnapLot 360 for an easier method of merchandising inventory without any additional inventory management platform.

Retailers need a smartphone and the SnapLot 360 app to capture exterior shots in seconds with a single walkaround. That creates a 360-degree shopper-controlled and self-guided tour of the vehicle, and vAuto said that can result in a strong increase in their inventories’ visibility.

vAuto said SnapLot 360 is an integrated application that can provide a highly visual and virtual experience for potential customers that closely mimics the real-life experiences when purchasing a car. That includes visual aspects and live insights at the click of a button, vAuto said.

vAuto provided more details on the features, saying that with Exterior 360 Capture, users can do a quick walk around the vehicle and capture high-resolution, exterior 360 spin images in seconds, using their Android or iOS device.

Interior 360 Capture can create interior panoramic views that bring the customer inside the cabin.

With Hot Spot Tagging, stencils guide dealerships to specific features in the photos and automatically tags them as hot spots. The company said that provides a more visual and informative vehicle detail page.

With the 360 Syndication feature, dealerships can take images and syndicate those photos to top car shopping sites and website providers such as Autotrader and Dealer.com.

Another feature is automatic photo extraction and upload. After a user captures the 360 spin images, he or she can automatically extract photos and upload them to vAuto Provision or Conquest via wireless. That reduces the manual work required by dealers and can save time and increase efficiency, vAuto said.

Cox Automotive senior vice president of inventory solutions Paul Whitworth said matching supply to demand will be a big industry challenge this year.

“Connecting advanced marketing and merchandising capabilities, like Snaplot 360, directly to the marketplaces where consumers instinctively go to look for vehicles establishes a new level of value for dealerships,” Whitworth said in a news release. “This is just one of the many ways we are reimagining the vast array of solutions across Cox Automotive to solve business problems for our clients.”

Cox Automotive’s 2021 Car Buyer Journey Study shows that 74% of franchise dealers say their customers have used digital retailing tools more since COVID-19. vAuto said that indicates that dealerships should have advanced digital merchandising tools and enhanced visualization in the year ahead.