At this point in my life I had quit corporate life with Vodafone to move to France. It was my dream to go and live in the French countryside and bring a traditional Query house back to life. Having completed the house, we were going to continue our renovation and turn our huge barn into Gites but something made us slam on the brakes because from an investment point of view it was too many eggs in one basket.
My husband loves the sea and loves to sail. We decided to go and see what life was like in Turkey, talk about a contrast! So we drove to Turkey from France in an old Landrover called Olive. That’s a whole other story that I will share one day.
We found a lovely little villa in Kalkan on the Southwest Turqouise Coast of Turkey and it was absolutely gorgeous! It had plenty of space, pretty gardens and a sea view that was off the scale! We couldn’t really believe that our house in the UK had produced enough profit for us to do France and Turkey but it had and we felt so incredibly lucky.
THE NEED FOR A WEBSITE
We needed to sweat our assets though, we still needed a rental income. The way to do this was of course to rent it out. To do this we needed a website, which I decided could not be that difficult and so I set about building one.
I got myself some Microsoft Front Page software, did a lot of online tutorials and designed and built my very first website. I can’t say it was easy, I didn’t really have a clue but the more I did, the more I learned and I found I really loved doing it.
Back then, there were no online website builders to make it easy. Over the years I have studied graphic design and learned coding from professional bodies and when I look back it was so simplistic but at the time it was such a massive achievement.
GETTING FOUND ON GOOGLE
The learning did not end there that was really just the start. The next challenge was to get the website onto page one of Google. Again, I studied hard and read everything I possibly could about search engine optimisation (SEO). After a few months my little website was on page one of Google for “Villas to rent in Kalkan”. Another huge milestone had been overcome.
Taking Bookings
The sign of success was quite simply bookings. The villa was fully booked for the 6 years that we owned it and that was all down to the website, we didn’t advertise anywhere else.
A COMPETITION!
So here’s a thing. 123-Reg (a hosting company) were running a competition for people to submit their first ever website. I had to tell a bit of a story of how it came about and submit a screenshot of the home page of the website. In for a penny in for a pound!
As you can see it was not the prettiest website in the world and is definitely not the best designed – the sea background is all a bit old hat now and when I look at what I design today compared to that, it’s chalk and cheese.
BUT IT WON!!
So not only had my funny little website done a great job at marketing, it had won a prize. Wow, maybe I did have something!
THERE WAS A DEMAND
In the end it came about that there was a demand for my services. The designer in me was definitely starting to come out, a skill that has of course been honed over the past 20 years. I also had an ability to get them found on Google!
So I built websites for friends, which involved a Ski Chalet, more villas in Turkey, a resort in Tonga and a beach house in Kenya. Things were really taking off and I was absolutely loving every minute of it.
I have always loved design, in particular interior design, so web design seemed like a very natural thing for me to do. I went to college and university and learned a whole lot more stuff that makes me the skilled web designer that I am today but none if it would have happened if it wasn’t for that gorgeous little villa with the amazing sea views.
