Background about York University School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design
York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) has long been a leader in creative education, attracting students from across Canada and abroad into various disciplines from film and visual arts to theatre, music and more.
To help prospective students explore AMPD’s programs and campus environment, the faculty partnered with Circuit Virtual Tours to deliver an immersive virtual experience showcasing facilities, studios, and student life.
The challenge: converting curiosity into campus discovery
Just over a year after implementing Circuit, the AMPD team was seeing steady traffic, engagement, and lead conversion. But they identified a new goal: drive more prospective students from high-traffic program pages directly into the virtual tour to discover AMPD’s high-quality facilities and learning environments.
To do this, they sought to address the following gaps:
- Program pages were heavily visited but lacked a compelling visual pathway that encouraged deeper exploration on their virtual tour
- Tour links lived solely in the site navigation and dropped users on the general homepage
- Students had to manually find the tours aligned with their interest, adding friction and drop-off
- Organic visitors weren’t being guided from information → exploration → conversion
For a faculty where facilities play a major role in a student’s decision, addressing these mattered.
“When students are considering an arts- or performance-focused education, facilities are an extremely important factor. Showcasing our incredible spaces here at York is essential to student recruitment. Since many of our prospective students live outside the Greater Toronto Area and abroad, our Circuit virtual tour helps bring our campus to life for those who can’t visit it in person.”
Stacy Raivich, Director of Communications & Digital Engagement at AMPD
The solution: AMPD adds Circuit Embed Banners to program pages
In July 2025, AMPD’s web developer, Farshad Naderi, deployed Circuit’s branded Embed Banners across 8 key program pages. The banners:
- Matched YorkU AMPD’s visual identity
- Were implemented in minutes with a simple snippet of code
- Invited visitors to “Take a Virtual Tour” tailored to each discipline
- Brought users directly into the relevant virtual tour experience
- Instantly reflected any future changes made to tour titles, descriptions, imagery or tour guides in the CMS, with no extra manual work
The result was a seamless and intuitive pathway from a program page to a matching immersive experience.
“Getting site visitors to pages that are most relevant to them is key to a good website experience,” says Raivich. “Adding Circuit Embed Banners that link directly to the right section of the tour on the program pages makes the user experience more intuitive.”
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The results: immediate and measurable student engagement
Immediately after the July 7 launch, visitor traffic, sessions, and tour starts doubled. Four months on, that momentum hasn’t slowed—users are up 83% year-over-year and tour starts are up 125%.
The embed banners effectively transformed static program pages into active conversion points—guiding more students into the virtual experience and strengthening their connection to AMPD’s story. As audience volume increased, Call to Action activity grew in parallel, boosting event awareness and registration, inquiry form submissions, and engagement with key enrollment deadlines.
"We're seeing more students finding tours and landing directly on the content that matters most to them, leading to increased engagement. A boost in our virtual tour traffic means more students are experiencing what makes AMPD special before they step foot on campus."
The takeaway: smart placement creates a big impact
YorkU AMPD’s success illustrates how strategically placed virtual tour banners can foster student exploration and interest. By embedding the tour experience into their web ecosystem, AMPD created a more cohesive, intuitive digital journey—one that drives more engagement, more discovery, and a better understanding of what makes AMPD unique.
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