[Update, Jan 2023]: Analytics is now also available in PixRiot, which is our optimized (optional) hosting solution for 360 product photography and 3d product views.

We're happy to announce that the new build of WebRotate 360 Product Viewer v3.6 beta is now available for download. This time, it's primarily to give our PRO users an early access to our new Google Analytics integration that makes it possible to fully track user engagement with your 3D product views using your standard Google Analytics dashboard.

To access this integration, click on the small button next to the Template drop-down on the Publish form as shown on the screenshot below.

Then check the first box to enable Google Analytics events for this project. If needed, you can also change the name of this project for the purpose of tracking this product view inside Google Analytics. This name becomes an event label that you will see once your start browsing WebRotate 360 events in your Google Analytics dashboard (GA dashboard) and will allow you to filter all WebRotate 360 events by product view.

Here you can also check to add Google Analytics tracking script to your published html template automatically on publish. This will require a tracking id which is a code that is automatically assigned to any web property in your GA dashboard. This tracking id usually looks like this UA-XXXXXXX-X and can be accessed either on the Home page of your Google Analytics (next to the website / property name in the list of properties) or via the Admin page under the Property settings.

When Tracking ID is configured as shown above, your published html will include standard Google Analytics tracking script, so once the published files are uploaded online, you can start testing the integration right away. If you are integrating your published product views with a website that has the Google Analytics script already hooked up, adding the tracking script and the id as shown on the screenshot is not necessary (it's there mostly for quick testing or when you need to embed the 3D views via iFrame).

Note that our Google Analytics integration will first check if the standard Google Alanytics script is present on the same page where the viewer is loaded and if it doesn't find it there, it will try to access the script from a parent page if available. This allows integrating the Google Analytics tracking even when your 3D product views are embedded elsewhere via an iFrame.

Lets review the types of events that are now available for tracking WebRotate 360 user engagement in your GA dashboard.

All WebRotate 360 events are categorized under WebRotate360 category so once your published project is live, you can start browsing events that belong to this specific category (i.e, WebRotate360). These events will show either under the Real-Time tab of your GA dashboard (under Events) or via the Behavior tab as shown below which doesn't show real-time results but has more event details and more options for event filtering and navigation.

There are currently 11 event (action) types that are being tracked in WebRotate 360 Product Viewer. Some of these events also include associated time value (in milliseconds) to give you more context for understanding how users engage with your product views. These extra time values give you a valuable quantitative measure of user engagement that directly corresponds to the time spent on a webpage while navigating interactive product views. All of these events also include event label that you can see and update on the Google Analytics form in SpotEditor for each of your product views as noted above.

ViewerLoaded

Fired every time a 3D product view is loaded in full. Includes the number of milliseconds it took for the 3D view to load in full.

ViewerReloaded

Same as ViewerLoaded but this event is fired when a product view is reloaded in-place using either our API or corresponding hotspot action (i.e hyperlink action pointing to an xml file).

ImageHover

Fired when user moves mouse cursor outside of the 3D product viewer or when the user starts dragging images with the left mouse button depressed or when a hotspot popup is activated. This event also includes the number of milliseconds that user spent hovering over the 3D product images. Note that the ImageHover event doesn't fire on mobile devices with touch screens.

ImageGrab

Fired when user stops dragging the images with either mouse or touch. Includes the number of milliseconds that the user spent dragging the images.

Zoom

Fired every time the toolbar Zoom button is clicked (on zoom-in only) or when the zooming function is triggered via double-click / double-tap. It's also fired when zoom-in is activated via API.

Playback

Fired every time the toolbar Playback button is clicked (on playback start only) or when the same function is triggered via API.

ArrowNavigation

Fired every time the toolbar Arrow buttons are clicked (left, right, up or down) or when the same functions are triggered via API.

Fullscreen

Fired every time the toolbar Full-screen button is clicked (on full-screen activation only) or when the same function is activated via API.

HotspotsOnOff

Fired every time the toolbar Hotspot On/Off button is clicked or when the same function is triggered via API.

HotspotPopup

Fired when user deactivates a hotspot popup that he / she just activated via tap, click or mouse hover. This event also includes the number of milliseconds that user spent reading or browsing the content of the hotspot popup.

HotspotAction

Fired when user clicks on a hotspot popup that has a hotspot action assigned (i.e hyperlink action, label action, etc).

Our CMS and eCommerce plugins are being updated right now to seamlessly integrate with the new Google Analytics events so very soon all you would need to do (in your WebRotate 360 plugins for WordPress, Magento, OpenCart, etc) is to check a singe box in your plugin dashboard to enable the same analytics. The rest of the wiring is implemented inside the plugins such as event label assignment based on product SKU or shortcode and similar.

DOWNLOAD

Previously released features and fixes in v3.6:

• WebRotate 360 Product Viewer 3.6 Build 542
• WebRotate 360 Product Viewer 3.6 Build 127
• Full version history

PRO & Enterprise customers can either request the commercial version of v3.6 Beta via support email (support at webrotate360 dot com). If you received v3.6 beta download URL from us before, it still works! And if you already have the previous build of v3.6 beta installed, you can simply download the new update via Check Updates on the About form in SpotEditor.

If you need any help applying this update to any of WebRotate 360's plugins (i.e, WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, Magento, OpenCart, BigCommerce), please let us know and we would be happy to assist.

Check out our latest blog post on PhotoGear360.com. It's about one of our more "special" 360 product photography projects that our team has been involved with for a period of two years, photo shooting pistols (in 360 degrees!) for Glock USA.

It was pretty memorable to the say the least. But we have learned a lot too - from renting studio space in LA for handgun photography to building exhaustively consistent 360 product photography setup on location from scratch every 6 months..

We have been informed yesterday that a third-party JavaScript library that we use for our "light-box" popups in some of our CMS plugins has a security issue that has just been fixed by its developer a couple of days ago.

If you are currently using WebRotate 360's CMS plugins with any of these platforms, we urge you to apply this patch as soon as possible:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Magento
• OpenCart (v2.0 and up)
• PrestaShop (v1.6 and up)

Here's how to apply the patch for each of these platforms:

• Download patched file here.
• Unzip jquery.prettyPhoto.js.
• Copy jquery.prettyPhoto.js via FTP over the existing file with the same name on your CMS site as follows and refresh your CMS cache (if any is enabled):

WordPress:

/wp-content/plugins/webrotate-360-product-viewer/prettyphoto/js/jquery.prettyPhoto.js

Magento:

/skin/frontend/base/default/prettyPhoto/js/jquery.prettyPhoto.js

OpenCart:

/catalog/controller/module/wr360/prettyphoto/js/jquery.prettyPhoto.js

Joomla:

/plugins/content/webrotate360/prettyphoto/js/jquery.prettyPhoto.js

PrestaShop:

/modules/webrotate360/prettyphoto/js/jquery.prettyPhoto.js

PS: our plugins are being updated as well to incorporate the patch but these simple steps above would be the easiest way to apply it now.

In this post we will talk briefly about a project we did for Glock USA a couple of years ago when we were chosen to produce 360 product photography of pretty much all of Glock’s handguns.. This was an interesting and unusual assignment to say the least!

For one thing, there was no question about photographing guns in our own small studio. We had to find a couple of better options in downtown Los Angeles and Anaheim where we could meet with Glock’s team flying over all the way from Georgia and feel safe about photographing a small arsenal of firearms (Glock had to arrange with authorities for this first, of course).

Another challenge was to find a good way to photograph pistols of various sizes and weights in 360 degrees in a consistent manner and very quickly such that we could finish everything in 2-3 days.

On location – 360 product photography setup for Glock:

So the first task was to build a test setup to make sure everything would work on location which we did about a month in advance. And since we didn’t have access to the guns, we asked Glock to send us just a few magazines that would represent the majority of the items we were about to photograph. That was good enough to devise a simple approach:

Each magazine had a sturdy plastic base plate at the bottom that also had tiny rails for the actual magazine to slide in and out (you can almost see the rails in this image below). This base plate was stiff enough for us to drill in two holes and then mount it via small bolts onto an aluminum sheet that served as the base for all guns.

Magazine base plate:

This aluminum sheet was then itself attached to the turntable. We used the aluminum sheet such that we could easily drill wholes in it and then cut threads as well to firmly screw in the bolts which were coming out of the magazine plates. This was essential as some guns were small and others were quite long so the center of balance of the 360-degree rotation was different for various guns and extra holes had to be made quickly on site. We then wrapped the aluminum sheet with white tape to make sure there’s no glare and it could be easily removed during post production.

Plate assembly for balanced product rotation:

This worked very well as all we had to do for the majority of pistols was to slide in a new (empty!) magazine into the plastic magazine plate that was already screwed in to the aluminum sheet (and attached to the turntable) and then slide in the gun itself onto the magazine. That is until we had to change the magazine plate for a different model.

On location close-up:

The only small issue that remained was that these guns were quite heavy so there was a tilt on the barrel end and some smaller guns had an angled grip bottom which we compensated using a combination of washers going through the bolts between the magazine plate and the aluminum sheet as you can see better in these images:

Angle compensation with washers (example 1):

Everything had to be automated to make sure we finish the project on time so we used small Ortery PhotoCapture 360 as it was tough enough for all the items we photographed. The rest was pretty straightforward!

We have recently moved all posts from our old photogear360 blog here, so here's some related material you may find useful:

• 360 Product Photography of Long Narrow Objects
• 360 product photography upside down
• Using suspension in 360 product photography (example 1)
• Using suspension in 360 product photography (example 2)
• White background in your 360 product photography projects
• DIY guide to building a manual 360 product photography turntable
• 360 product photography of large objects
• Mastering 360 product photography
• 360 product photography of flashlights