Name of your website?London Local Guide
Your name?
Andy Francis
Your Location (city, etc)
London
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Londons Local Guide provides information on business services as well as entertainment in the local area for both the local community as well as visitors to our great city of London.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We felt that most of the information sites about London were a little bland and if we are honest boring. We also wanted to focus on the local area as we felt most people living in London would prefer to use a local service given the choice.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
We launched this site in October 2007.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It was really very easy we wanted a local guide for London and londonslocalguide.co.uk was available.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We offer a whole host of different information all aimed at the users local area. For example if you have children we list a whole host of information ranging from restaurants that are happy to have children through to activities to entertain your kids during the holidays. If you want to have a good night out we have a whole section dedicated to eating and drinking in the local area and we also have information for both residents of London and tourists such as theatres ,shows comedy etc.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Keep it for income and continually develop it.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
At present the time invested against the money raised is very much balanced in favour of time but we believe that the site is developing nicely and the number of advertisers is increasing also so it won't be long before the balance is redressed.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
From a design perspective we don't think we would change very much but if we had an unlimited budget we would spend a lot more on advertising
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes we have a good team working on it and we believe we would, it would certainly be a nice problem to have.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Upgrading the site to get the look and feel we were looking for has been a headache.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Because of the type of site it is there is an awful lot of uploading of listings to be done and as we have just gone past our first year there were a lot of renewals to deal with that we hadn't really considered. We now have an automated renewal in place.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
We will continue running it until it is a success, we cannot imagine it not being successful now.
What is the website address and how much does it cost to advertise?
The website address is http://www.londonslocalguide.co.uk and once you have landed on the home page you will see a menu item named compare memberships. Here you have 4 options ranging from a completely free listing through to a premium listing.
What is your website address?
London Local Guide
