This seasoned Realtor® goes back to basics, using ingenuity, skill and the expertise of professionals to create a new, powerful, interactive website (www.PrimeVoyage.com) which directly assesses the value of your home!

Dear Michael,

I got my license in 1977 and started farming a neighborhood in 1978. I walked it religiously until 1989 when the local postman took over the delivery! I followed up by distributing an informational neighborhood newsletter which has, indeed, drawn business over the years. Today, neighborhood farming is still about half of my work.

Yet, after thirty years as a real estate agent, I have utilized one of your most valuable pieces of advice by going back to basics in order to grow a unique offshoot of my existing business. I kept my existing website www.ScottWilliams.com, but created a new one, my fifth building of a website, www.primevoyage.com. I guess you could say that my methods in doing this were a veritable mixture of “Russer” and a little bit of “Gerber”. I was spending so much time running a business and doing things that were providing a living that it took a real effort for me to re-examine the basic features of my business and start my wheels turning. I started thinking things like, “what if I wanted to sell the business” or “what if I wanted to transfer it to someone else?” With all the things a business owner ought to do, taking a hard look at the way my business was operating was the most difficult and the most important lesson I learned. I credit myself with that much, at least, of being able to see the need for reassessment. The experience was humbling. It took nearly two years to hire the right people to build Prime Voyage, and while it has only been active for two months, I’m getting word of mouth buzz on this site. I’m beginning to really reap some of the benefits of offering a service to the public that has not been offered before. I have not only found a niche market, but I actually created one!

With your encouragement, I previously built four different websites. I started with cookie cutter, migrating to custom ones. This time round, I went about finding the right resources and the right people with the right skills, to build an even better website that would allow me to do more with the information I gleaned and actually SHOW visitors that I know the neighborhoods—specifically16 separate neighborhoods in Santa Barbara, CA. I took the traditional farming neighborhood newsletter as the model for the sites, but improved on the print model through brainstorming new ideas with you. Taking the newsletter model to the web allows me to grow the information presented in ways that would never be affordable in print. In the process, my site provides useful tools and information that no other local site offers. Prime Voyage has the first, automated, web-based Home Valuation ToolTM that provides crucial and accurate results which address direct, relevant information for the homeowner, home buyer and the general public.

An accurate analysis of a property is the ‘holy grail’ of real estate sites. No one else out there is offering this. “Zillow” (www.zillow.com) is a similar online resource which claims to perform this service, but such important factors as location and the condition of a property are only included when a third-party assessor is hired to do so.

Heeding your suggestions, again, I hired virtual consultants to help make important decisions in building the new site, such as what language to use and strategies for SEO so that the results and capabilities of the site would be understood by people in the business. I learned that it’s a good idea to have people on board with extreme technical skills. I didn’t know what functions needed to be included or activated, but I knew I needed people who did. I then asked my prime VC to hire a programmer. Following your advice, I gave the work to the experts—my virtual consultants. Today, the work on the site is mostly maintenance and I will occasionally call upon their expertise. I expect this site to take less time than writing the monthly newsletter that I still send out, and the newsletter promotes the site.

One major decision led to the next. Out of initial conversations with these experts, I realized that simply using my own name to dub the website, was basically uninteresting and ultimately, not saleable. Scott Williams is certainly not as enticing as Prime Voyage. I used experts to pick the brand name. Here, too, I learned that branding the product and not myself was the thing to do. I took the advice of the experts who ideated the slogan, “Connecting Your Home with Your Next Adventure.” I would not have come up with this, alone.

I also implemented another of your truly brilliant ideas. I went to online freelance worksites (Elance and Guru) and found voice talent to record phone interviews with my clients, posing to them twelve questions that I came up with, to create testimonial content for the website. I found that there really was a substantial difference in the sound bites I got, as opposed to using written testimonials—especially when you contact a client within a few days either side of escrow closing. If it happens later than that, their comments lose their edge, and that’s when you realize that these are the calls someone should make much sooner! Once you have those sound files, you can offer them on CDs to other potential clients. Buttons to access these interviews are scattered throughout the sites.

This is the first time I’m aware that the public is visiting me—via Prime Voyage, contacting me with questions prompted by their visits to the site. I didn’t recommend my other websites as aggressively as I do this one, because there is active engagement on this site. As I move forward with the feedback I get, it helps me to immediately tweak the site for greater usability. If it operates right, it feels right. If it is going to be interesting to the general public, my own site has to be interesting and lucrative enough for me!

These contacts enable me to gladly walk people through a market analysis of their home’s worth, including market appreciation/depreciation, with Prime Voyage software that can create settings for the particular criteria involved, such as location, condition, size of the home and more. The software, itself, makes things that might be hard to otherwise understand, much easier. My associations with those who have visited the site have been and continue to be positive and much appreciated. I’m always up for a discussion of how much a property is worth or signing up for auto e-mail updates. These are central to making real estate decisions.

At this point in time, I would actually like to find someone out there who could package the software and help promote it for agents to add to their own sites. I don’t want to start selling software. The VCs who built it for me could do installation, but I would like to find that MLS-friendly expert who is interested in promoting sales of this software so other agents can experience the benefit of it as well.

Thank you,

Scott Williams

Scott Williams’ property valuation site, Prime Voyage, is especially oriented toward the home owner who seeks information about what the current market trends are in a particular (Santa Barbara) neighborhood. www.PrimeVoyage.com lets you go back to basics, too!

Contact Scott at scott@primevoyage.com

Prudential California Realty
3868 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 563-4031