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.”

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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!

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There’s plenty of reason to be optimistic

When you first start your web design business, it’s usually because you’ve got your first client.  Someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know, found out that you could design a website and so you agreed to do it for “less than what that other guy wants to charge! Jeez, he’s ripping you off!”  You will probably look back on your first site years from now and laugh in shame at how bad you were at the beginning. Not to worry! The guy who paid you got exactly what he paid for. If he wanted, or rather, needed a better website, he would have paid more for it. This is good news for you, because it allows you to get into a wonderful business that helps other businesses become more successful, and if you work hard, you can enjoy a fair amount of success yourself.

With millions of websites being developed, there’s room for hundreds of thousands of web designers. The more experienced you are, the better you’ll serve your clients, and the more you can charge them. But first thing’s first, you’ve got to put in the time. There are no shortcuts in business and there’s no such thing as luck. The harder you work, the “luckier” you’ll get.

Remember, knowledge is power in our society, and therefore you must invest in yourself by acquiring (and continuously sharpening) skills. The web technologies available today are truly exciting! AJAX and the whole web 2.0 movement is actually interesting, even, dare I say, fun to learn.

More to come!

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Starting your web design business

So, you’ve decided to start your own web design business, huh? First of all, congratulations!  Secondly, get ready to work hard, because nothing in life will succeed unless you’re willing to work hard for it.

When I first started WorldLight Media,  I remember working harder than I’ve ever worked at any other job I’d had.  Longer hours every day, six or seven days a week; I literally ate, slept, and breathed web design. But there was something different that kept me going day after day, month after month: Passion. I actually LOVED what I was doing, and therefore I could work for hours on end without wearing down.

After two years of going at it full time, not much has changed in terms of how hard I work. Only now am I getting the revelation of “working smarter, not harder”. I used to think that was a license to be lazy in exchange for knowledge. Now I know that I can never be lazy, because it only leads to failure. However, I am working smarter, so that my hard work doesn’t just add increases to the value of my company, it MULTIPLIES exponentially, so that my hard work pays off with greater and greater returns.

There’s one resource that I can recommend that can be truly beneficial: Tailored Podcast - Brendon Sinclairs Business Mix

I’ve started listening to these podcasts several times a week, and each one changes the way I do business. I first heard of Brendon Sinclair by reading articles on Sitepoint.com, which incidentally is another invaluable resource for any level of web designer.

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