THE PUBLIC response to Portugal Blue Pages, a website born out of demand for The Resident Service Directory to be available online, has exceeded expectations.
The concept to bring out a hard copy of a service directory of businesses and services in the Algarve came about in 2001, following the success of the weekly Business Directory pages in The Resident. At the 2001 Better Living in Portugal (BLiP) exhibition, The Resident Service Directory, now affectionately known as The Blue Book, was launched with 5,000 copies.
In 2005, 7,000 copies of The Blue Book were printed and, in 2006, via advertisers for free distribution to clients and visitors alike, 9,050 copies were distributed at BLiP. Filling a gap in the marketplace and requests from readers to produce an online version of The Blue Book, the Portugal Blue Pages website was launched on October 1, 2006. With an original input of 500 entries, the website database has more than tripled in size, to contain more than 1,600 online entries to date.
Freedom
Viewers have unlimited freedom to search the Portugal Blue Pages free of charge for a product or service, without the fuss of registering as a member or paying for the service. It offers a phone number finder, as well as a more concise business directory, which can be searched by category, concelho or both.
The website uses unique visitor statistics, logging ip addresses, rather than hits to evaluate the popularity and usage of the website. This ensures a professional level of accuracy above hit boxes, which in some cases can be fiddled to inflate statistics according to the webmasters requirements.
Currently, 1,000 searches are registered every day from individual users and, at the time of going to press, the website had produced more than 39,000 lists since it was launched.
Powering and managing this comprehensive and diverse website is a full time job shared through collaboration between Nexus, Dynamic Fish and The Resident. Nexus was established in 1995 by three partners, including Dave Leeke and Steve Reid. It was the first company in the Algarve, and one of the first in Portugal, to offer companies access to the internet and full services to promote their products and services online: from PC management, repairs and servicing to website portals.
Dave Leeke, with over 25 years experience in programming and management of websites, saw the need for high end websites with dynamic capability, where the system can be changed by user’s with little or no knowledge of website functionality or programming, although as Dave commented “a little knowledge can help”.
The content in Dynamic websites is totally controllable, so companies can control their own website content and marketing, and, from this demand, Dynamic Fish was formed in 2001.
Professional service
Nexus, whose own directory has existed for over 12 years and was well listed in the major search engines, amalgamated its directory into the Portugal Blue Pages to create a comprehensive online base of companies operating in the Algarve. A professional service ensures advertisers get the best possible return and viewers get the information they need.
Portugal Blue Pages will eventually expand to encompass the whole of Portugal and the website will be available in Portuguese, as well as English, later in the year. The success of the website is undoubtedly due to viewers using the website to source companies.
If you are looking for a business or service, or if you would like your company to be listed, visit www.portugalbluepages.com or call 282 342 936 for information.
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