Classic Insulation & Pest Control Website Launched by WorldLight Media

Mount Vernon, WA - Classic Insulation & Pest Control has hired WorldLight Media to produce it’s new Branding Identity. The centerpiece of this Brand Strategy is their new website: www.ClassicInsulation.com. But they also have completely updated their corporate image with a new logo, business cards, yellow page ads, and brochures. “Everything about the way this company looks has been enhanced” said Nathan Solla, Creative Director of the campaign and Owner of WorldLight Media. “Classic Services already has a solid reputation of quality service in the community, but their current branding didn’t do a good enough job of showcasing that quality.  Now every time they engage in marketing activity, everything their customer sees is saturated with an image of high quality professionalism that truly reflects their commitment to excellence.”

While Classic Insulation & Pest Control offers many valuable services, it was difficult to come up with a new identity for the logo that was simple, yet easy to remember and pronounce. “‘Classic Services’ is the name they may mention while answering the phones, but it does not say really anything about what they do,” Solla said, “Plus, the domain name was already taken!”

After conducting an analysis of the industry and target market, the domain name “classicinsulation.com” was selected. “Eventually, other domain names, like ‘classicpestcontrol.com’ and ‘classicservices.com’ will become available,” predicted Solla, “and we can help them acquire those domains to further their brand strategy.”

For now, check out the new website: Classic Insulation & Pest Control

Custom Top-Level-Domains in Spring 2009… For $100k+

Did you ever want your own TLD (Top Level Domain)? Instead of having a website with a standard TLD like .COM or .NET, why not .BOB or .Dude or .News or .Honda? Well, today the ICANN voted to proceed with plans to make custom TLDs available.

“This is a historic resolution,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of Icann’s board. “It’s going to make a big difference to how the Internet looks and works.”

ICANN officials said some technical issues for the new system must still be worked out, but it could be reviewing the first applications for new TLDs as early as next spring. The application fee is expected to cost more than $100,000.

Under the new system, individuals, companies or groups could apply to have any string of letters established as a domain name. It could be a vanity name, for example — .smith — or a category name like .sports or .perfume. A company could also change its domain to reflect its brand, so Apple.com could become Apple.mac, for instance.

(source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2635186520080626)

Did Firefox 3 Pull the Old Bait and Switch Routine?

We all know about Firefox 2’s ghastly fallbacks. The memory hogging, CPU sucking days were supposed to be over with the release of the new Firefox 3 browser, right? Or so they said…

I’ll be the first to admit, (or rather, the 409,718th to admit) that the RC1 and RC2 “pre-release” versions of the Firefox 3 browser were in fact much faster, much more memory efficient, and, in general, offered a more enjoyable browsing experience than their predecessors.

However, today Mozilla launched the “Official” release of the Firefox 3 browser, which I downloaded and installed about 2 hours ago.  And, as you may have guessed, the browser is once again up to it’s old shenanigans! So, slow, so, so slow. So much RAM being wasted! (On what?)

In sales, they call this “bait and switch”. They “bait” you with one product whilst boasting it’s extravagant features, then, once you’re hooked, they “switch” it with an inferior product. In most countries, the practice is completely ILLEGAL! Companies found guilty would have to pay back the consumers. However, we did not have to purchase this browser, it was free. But that doesn’t mean it comes with out a hefty price: Your Time (and your electricity to push your now severely overworked CPU).

There are also quite a few bugs that I’ve noticed. Such as, when trying to add a bookmark by dragging the favicon into the bookmark bar’s folder, there are some sub menu tiers that cannot be accessed.  And pressing Control-D to bookmark doesn’t remember the last folder you added a bookmark to (unless you added it in one certain way, via the CTRL-D dialogue box).  I even emailed these bugs to Mozilla, but they released the new version without fixing them for some reason.

So, to me, the new version is worthless. The result: I will be re-installing FF2 as soon as I get the chance.

If you haven’t done so yet, please do not bother upgrading to the new browser.

Marketing ROI? Prove it.

Marketing ROI? Prove it.
The gold standard for measuring marketing ROI occurs when you can demonstrate a cold, hard sale as the result of viewing some marketing materials. This kind of hard data is few and far between, but progress is being made. The Microsoft marketing scorecards, for instance, contain data on how many customers spend time on a Web page about Windows Vista. They also reveal how many readers click through to a specific retail partner such as Best Buy to purchase a package.

5 Perfect ‘Spare-Time’ Online Businesses - Entrepreneur.com

5 Perfect ‘Spare-Time’ Online Businesses - Entrepreneur.com

WorldLight Media can help you get started in each of these businesses. The cost? Starting at $5 per month!

Find out how by email us. info@worldlightmedia.com

Want to know how to design? Learn The Basics.

Want to know how to design? Learn The Basics.
Want to know how to design? Learn The Basics.

Top Trends of Web Design that are dumb

Some things catch on. Some things don’t. Who’s to say what will or won’t be cool in the eyes of the masses? I wish it were me. But, it’s not, because if it were up to me, there are about ___ emerging trends that I would not allow to endure. Here’s a wish-list of short lived trends that shouldn’t have been:

1. The wooden panel trend…

Please. It wasn’t cool on your grandma’s station wagon, and it’s certainly not cool enough to be “in” on the latest websites.

http://www.reconstructing-ideas.com, weeatt.com, incg.nl, santa-barbara-wineries.com, andrewbradshaw.com

2. The vector character with fat, ovular features trend…

Is there one artist who is pumping out these vector cartoons? They keep popping up, and there heads keep getting fatter.

http://www.mediadesignmarketing.com/

http://www.unmatchedstyle.com/gallery/bookkeeping-in-a-box.php

So far, two whole items isn’t much of a “list”. But what can I say, I’m a pretty content person.

In the interest of not having a blog post be totally negative and whiny, let me end on a positive note: Stuff I think IS cool…

Cool Emerging Trends:

1. Rainbowish color blend
2. Stuff under Ground

How to save money running a startup 17 really good tips

Check out this article on some wise ways to save, and invest, when launching a tech startup. Here’s a taste…

I’ve got a bunch of tips on how to do this for business. Among them:

1. Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department
2. Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year… which is at least $2,000 a year…. which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you’re getting 10-20x return on your investment… and you’ve got a happy team member.
3. Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy. Going out for food or ording in takes at least 20-60 minutes more than walking up to the buffet and eating. If you do meetings over lunch you also save that time. So, 30 minutes a day across say four days a week is two hours a week… which is 100 hours a year. You get the idea.
4. Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters… invest in it.
5. Don’t buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person… 50 people over three years? $75-100k
6. Rent out your extra space. Many folks have extra space in their office. If you rent 5-10 desks for $500 each you can cut your burn $2,500 to $5,000 a month, or $30-60,000 a year. That’s big money.
7. Outsource accounting and HR—such a no brainer.
8. Don’t buy everyone Microsoft Office–it’s too much money. Put Office on three or four common computers and use Google Docs.
9. Use Google hosted email. $50 or free per user…. how can you beat that?!?! Why screw with an exchange server!?!?
10. Buy your hardest working folks computers for home. If you have folks who are willing to work an extra hour a day a week you should get them a computer for home. Once you get to three hours of work a week from home you’re at 150 hours a year and that’s a no brainer. Invest in equipment *if* the person is a workaholic.
11. Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.
12. Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office. Going to starbucks twice a day cost $4 each time, but more importantly it costs 20 minutes. Buy a $3-5,000 Jura industrial, get the good beans, and supply the coffee room with soy, low fat, etc. 50 people making one trip a day is 20 hours of wasted time for the company, and $150 in coffee costs for the employees. Makes no sense.
13. Stock the fridge with sodas—same drill as above.
14. Allow folks to work off hours. Commuting sucks and is a waste of time for everyone. Let folks start at 6am or 11am and you’ll cut their commute in half (at least in LA).
15. Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off. If half of them say yes you’ll save 5-15% on fixed costs. People will give you a discount if they think they are going to lose the business.
16. Don’t waste money on recruiters. Get inside of linkedin and Facebook and start looking for people–it works better anyway.
17. Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm. Perhaps you can get a PR consultant to work on 2-3 projects a year for $10-15k each and save 75%. More PR firms are wasted half the year while you build up your product anyway.

    {I’m going to add a couple more of mine as I remember them }

18. Outsource to middle America: There are tons of brilliant people living between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York who don’t live in a $4,000 one bedroom apartment and pay $8 to dry clean a shirt–hire them!

I think this is good information and it makes sense. If you are going to be successful, you’ve got to do all the right things right. I’ve worked at start-ups that splurge on fancy conference tables and state of the art phone systems, thinking those things are the core elements of your company.

I’ve also worked at companies that are stocked full of lazy workers… especially back before the dot-bomb days in 98-00. The ‘culture’ was so focused on ping-pong tables and trips to starbucks that nobody did anything (boy, those days were fun though!). I remember thinking, “This industry is so fat! It can’t sustain this level of productivity forever.” The same week that my start-up collapsed, I read an article in the Seattle Times that said 90,000 high-tech workers were now unemployed. I competed with those 90,000 people on every job I applied for over the next year and a half before I finally had to take a job in another industry. It took me several years to get back up after that.

But “all things work together for the Good of those who love God”, right? So here I am, owning my own business, learning from the past and working toward a better future.

How to save money running a startup 17 really good tips

True Built Home chooses WorldLight Media to build website!

For immediate release — Attention: Real Estate, Technology & Business Editors

Tacoma, WA — True Built Home, Inc. has selected WorldLight Media to build its new state-of-the-art website, set to open for public usage in early March. True Built Home, an On Your Lot volume home building company, was founded by Lewis D. Mann, one of the co-founders of competitor Reality Homes. True Built Home, Inc. was recently incorporated, and is opening branches in Tacoma, Burlington, and Centralia. “Our goal is to dominate the On Your Lot Building Industry for all of Western Washington” said Mann.

The website, www.truebuilthome.com, is a key component of their business model. “We are stoked about the new website and everything (WorldLight Media) is doing!” beamed Mann, “We are truly appreciative!” The new website is unlike any other website in the industry. Prospective home buyers will be able to log onto the website, browse through the various floor plans and home styles, and even choose their upgrades right on the website. A live “AJAX” based calculator updates the price as new upgrades are chosen. After they are finished choosing their new homes and customizing their upgrades, users are able to save the plans to their account for later viewing – or they can get started building.

“We are extremely excited about this website as well!” said Nathan Solla, Owner and Creative Director of WorldLight Media, a strategic branding and design company based out of Camano Island, Washington. “This is history in the making. In the future, all new homes will be bought and built in this way,” predicted Solla. “We believe our contribution to True Built Home is going to help give them their best possible chance of success, and that makes us very happy.”

Getting more traffic to your website

For many small companies who delve into the exciting new level of business that can only be obtained by getting a website, often times they don’t understand “why” they need a new website. The good news is, they do understand that they need a new website, so understanding “why” is of minor importance. Many business owners need a website to serve as a glorified, modernized version of what the yellow-pages once were, an easily accessible way to find your contact information. Increasingly so, yellow-pages are becoming obsolete due to the benefits of a website over a static yellow-page ad. (When was the last time you used your yellow-pages, versus simply searching for the information online instead?) Other businesses have more complex needs, such as the need to sell products on line, or the need to establish their brand in interactive ways, and so they need a website to perform these functions.

If you build it, will they come?

A common misconception among business owners is that simply building a website is enough. As I tell all of my clients, it is emphatically not enough. You must have a website, granted, but you must also drive traffic to that website. A website without a marketing strategy designed to bring visitors to your website is essentially worthless.

Getting Traffic

Now, there are many ways you can bring traffic to your website:

• Do it yourself - via word of mouth, you directly tell a prospective customer of yours to visit yoursite.com
• Print it on your marketing materials - Business cards, brochures, etc., can all be used in conjunction with your other marketing strategies to drive more traffic to your website.
• Online Marketing campaigns - Ads (text ads, banner ads, content ads) can be used to drive traffic to your site from other pages where visitors might be looking for products and services similar to what you offer.
• Google Adwords (Pay Per Click) - These ads target users where it counts, on the search engine pages. If a user searches for a keyword that matches your ad, then a link to your website will come up, often in the first page of results.

Now, these methods are for those who want a pro-active approach to actually drive traffic to their sites. But what about a more passive approach?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a method of optimizing your web pages so that your site will come up higher in the list of “organic” results. Organic results are more attractive to searchers than paid search results. You need to make sure your website is optimized so that people can find your website amid the billions of others out there. Relying solely on SEO is not an effective web marketing strategy, in and of itself, but it is imperative that SEO techniques are incorporated into your web marketing activities.

How many visitors do I need to be successful?

This question is commonly asked by businesses. The truthful answer is, “it depends”. Some sites I have built need only 10 visits per day to be effective. These 10 visitors were driven to the site by the business owner via word of mouth. They would check out the site, get more information, and decided to engage with my client in business. This same client tried much more broad-reaching strategies, and found that the increase in clients only succeeded in wasting his time, because of his unique selling proposition.

Depending on factors such as local competition, Internet competition, and factors unique to your product, service and business model, your web strategy needs to be custom designed for your needs. It’s a fairly complicated process that should be entrusted into the hands of a competent professional.

WorldLight Media would love to help you create your web marketing strategy. Contact us today via our contact form, or at (360) 547 - 1177. Of course, as we’ve already established, the first step is to get a website, which, incidentally, we would love to help you out with that as well!