Universities rarely question the value of a virtual experience. More often, they hesitate simply because setting one up sounds like an enormous undertaking.
When your team is already balancing Open Days, clearing campaigns, website projects, CRM migrations and a seemingly endless stream of stakeholder requests, adding one more initiative to the list can feel overwhelming.
At Vepple, we see this all the time. The biggest barrier to buying Vepple is the perceived workload. But then, once we begin working with a university, they discover the implementation process is significantly lighter than they expected.
Over 40+ university launches, we’ve noticed the same concerns come up again and again. So we decided to write about the five, most common, misconceptions we hear, and what institutions typically discover once they get started.
The team at Northumbria University’s onboarding in June 2026
Misconception 1: “We’re going to need to create a huge amount of brand-new content”
This is usually the first concern marketing teams raise.
When people see a polished virtual experience, they often assume it requires an enormous content production project before launch.
The assumption is understandable.
You imagine needing:
- New campus photography
- New subject videos
- Student ambassador content
- Virtual walkthroughs
- Interactive guides
And because Vepple is all about personalisation, you assume you’ll need to do all that for all 30+ subject areas that you have.
The reality is usually very different.
What universities already have
Most institutions already possess a significant proportion of the content needed to create an engaging virtual experience.
That often includes:
- Campus photography
- Copy about your university
- Student stories and user generated content
- Existing video content on social / YouTube
- Open Day assets
- Department and subject-specific content
- 360 imagery
- Hero videos from campaign
The challenge is rarely content creation. It’s content organisation.
Many universities are sitting on years’ worth of valuable recruitment content that’s difficult for prospective students to discover. A virtual experience helps surface and connect those existing assets in a personalised and more engaging way.
That’s why we typically recommend starting with what you already have.
The universities that see the most success launch a strong foundation, learn how students engage with the experience, and then use Vepple’s live user behaviour to prioritise future improvements.
Misconception 2: “We’ll be left to figure everything out ourselves”
Nobody enjoys buying software only to receive a login and a knowledgebase link. Yet many marketing teams have experienced exactly that.
It’s one of the reasons implementation projects often feel daunting before they’ve even started.
The difference between software and support
Successful implementation isn’t simply about learning a platform.
It’s about knowing:
- What content to prioritise
- How to structure the experience
- Which journeys prospective students use
- What works for other universities
- How to avoid common mistakes
That’s why we built KickStart.
Rather than leaving teams to navigate implementation independently, we work alongside them to map out the experience, configure the platform and build momentum quickly.
As Rob Gilroy, Campaign Content Officer at the University of Huddersfield, explains:
“Initially, it felt like a mammoth task, but the team at Vepple were so supportive and helpful at every stage. They made it all feel much more manageable and did so much of the heavy lifting as well. It honestly couldn’t have gone any smoother.”
What KickStart actually involves
Aside from the pep talks and snacks, there’s lots of serious stuff we cover in KickStart. Over two collaborative, highly focused days, our team works side-by-side with yours to get your platform ready for launch.
Here is what a typical KickStart can look like:
Day 1: Strategy, structure, and bringing your content to life
- Morning (The game plan): We grab a coffee and figure out exactly what your prospective students need to see. We talk about your goals, your audiences and how the platform will reach them. We walk through your pre-styled environment together and agree on any changes to the look and feel.
- Midday (Asset gathering): We talk about what assets you have to hand already. We then define your Sections (the topics students navigate your experience by), set up your Guided Tour and Page Builder templates, and begin a bulk import of your content into the CMS.
- Afternoon (Hands-on building): We run some hands-on training in the CMS and start building a Guided Tour using your Student’s Union 360° panoramas. We show you how to drop in an interactive Content Spot to a TikTok video that your SU president did showing off the spaces. We also show you our AI tool, The Veppliser, which instantly drafts scene descriptions to get the majority of your written content started.
By the end of the day, we’ve consumed two punnets of strawberries, 16 coffees, countless biscuits and have set a plan in place for Day 2.
Day 2: Building and polishing
Senior leaders have stepped out of today’s session, while an additional colleague from the CRM team has joined us.
- Morning (Capturing ROI and compliance): While some of the team get cracking with content in the approved templates from yesterday, we start mapping out the fields on the custom Lead Capture forms and setting up the api integration with the CRM. We also run through some more functional pages about accessibility and privacy. Now, you can start collecting prospective student data the moment you go live. After this, the CRM manager heads off to another meeting and we continue with the rest of Day 2.
- Afternoon (Configuration): Your university has Audience Personalisation, so we need to configure the rules for that. It also has Explore by Map, so the next step is about bringing the campus map to life. We plot out key points of interest and explain how the categories work.
- Wrap-up (The final countdown): At this point, all your 360s are uploaded, you’ve built 3 Guided Tours and you’re all trained in the CMS. One of the Vepple team has checked that your theme, branding, homepage and accessibility is all 10/10! We celebrate how much we have built, agree on the final few polishing touches, and hand you a crystal-clear roadmap for your launch date. We set a date for next week’s catch up, and pack up.
The biscuit count at this point is firmly heading towards 3 figures.
Misconception 3: “This project will consume months of our time”
For many institutions, this is the biggest concern. Higher Education isn’t known for rapid implementation projects. Marketing teams are often balancing multiple priorities while working with limited resources. As a result, it’s easy to assume a virtual experience rollout will become another lengthy project that sits on the to-do list for months.
Most launches happen much faster than expected
One of the biggest surprises for many of our partners is how quickly meaningful progress can be made.
Across our most recent implementations, Birmingham City University holds the record. They went live in just 2 weeks after completing KickStart.
Misconception 4: “We’ll need technical specialists to manage it”
If your website team already has a six-month backlog, the idea of introducing another digital platform can feel like a non-starter.
Many universities assume they’ll need developers, specialist support or ongoing technical resources simply to keep the experience up to date.
The platform is designed for marketing teams
The reality is that day-to-day updates can be completed without technical support.
That means teams can:
- Update content
- Add new media
- Create Guided Tours
- Build out maps and events
- Tag and personalise content for themselves
- Launch campaign-specific experiences
- Refresh recruitment messaging
- Create unique URLs for specific experiences
without raising development tickets or waiting for website sprints and release cycles.
This flexibility is particularly important when student expectations and recruitment priorities can change quickly.
As Sam Porter, Content and Social Media Manager at Heriot-Watt University, explains:
“Moving everything to Vepple has completely aligned our team. By centralising our content on one platform, we bypass endless internal challenges and we can deliver a highly professional digital product to our recruitment teams.”
Misconception 5: “What if we can’t prove the return on investment?”
Every university marketing team faces increasing pressure to demonstrate impact. That’s why many teams worry about spending time and budget on a new platform only to struggle to prove whether it worked.
Data is often where confidence grows fastest
The most successful universities don’t just use their virtual experience as a recruitment experience. They use it as a source of insight, too.
Understanding:
- What content students engage with
- Which subjects generate interest
- Where prospective students drop off
- Which calls-to-action drive enquiries
- How engagement varies across audiences
- How different audiences engage when the content is personalised
all helps teams make better decisions long after launch.
A real-world example
One of the clearest examples comes from UWE Bristol.
When the team noticed engagement with their traditional digital prospectus was declining, they made the decision to replace it entirely with Vepple. The result was a 969% increase in lead generation.
But perhaps more importantly, they gained far greater visibility into how prospective students were engaging with their content and where recruitment opportunities existed.
The biggest lesson we’ve learned after 40+ university implementations
After supporting many university launches, one pattern emerges.
The institutions that launch most successfully aren’t the ones with the largest teams, the biggest budgets or the most content.
They’re the teams willing to get stuck in. They focus on creating a strong initial experience, learning from real student behaviour and improving over time. They revisit the platform, learning from it and bringing it into their marketing mix as a channel that can grow and be optimised.
Taking the first step
If you’re considering a virtual experience, it’s completely normal to feel apprehensive about implementation. Most universities do. But the reality is usually far less daunting than expected.
You probably already have more content than you think.
You probably need less technical support than you imagine.
And you can likely make far more progress in a few days than you expect.
If you’d like a practical conversation about what implementation would actually look like for your institution, we’d be happy to help.
Just an honest discussion about:
- The content you already have
- The resources you’d need
- Typical timelines
- What success could look like for your team
And whether now is the right time to get started. Get in touch here.
