Shortlisted for The Good Web Guide Website of the Year 2009, The House Directory has evolved into an essential online resource for interiors and garden design. We caught up with co-founder Nicolette Le Pelley to find out more.
Explain your website.
TheHouseDirectory.com is an online sourcebook for interior and garden design and decoration, listing over 3,700 companies. It helps people find the right shop, product or specialist service and has a user-friendly format – you can scroll through the listings in each category, search for a company by A-Z or do a search for a specific item. We also have a free ‘Ask the Experts’ service for more unusual sourcing questions and a popular monthly newsletter with the latest trends and useful info.
How do you make money?
We are free to use, so we generate revenue from companies who pay for an ‘enhanced listing’ with a description, an image and useful links to their email and website addresses.
What inspired the idea?
Our business has evolved with the times. After running the telephone information service Design Line, we decided to put the answers to the most frequently asked decorating questions into the famous sourcebook ‘The House & Garden Book of Essential Addresses’ which ran to three editions and was often described by designers as their ‘bible’. Our book eventually became the database for TheHouseDirectory.com .
What's your background?
I was Deputy Editor of The World of Interiors magazine and my business partner Cheryl Knorr is an interior designer.
When did the site launch?
We launched in 2001, as www.houseandgardenaddresses.co.uk and ran the website in association with House & Garden magazine. We went independent in April 2008.
How many visits do you have per day?
We have over 1,000 visits a day, generating some 30,000 page views (hits) per day. For our site, it’s the page views that are important: many visitors are browsing through the listings pages thoroughly to find what they are looking for, or are sourcing several things whilst they are on our site.
Describe your average visitor.
We have several categories of user: people who have just bought a new home or are redecorating or those who are just looking to source a product or service. TheHouseDirectory.com is also used extensively by the ‘trade’, such as interior designers, architects, journalists, stylists and TV programme researchers.
Who are your closest competitors?
We have no direct competitor at our ‘top end’ of the market. Other decoration websites are either shopping portals like mydeco or the online presence of commercial magazines.
What is your biggest challenge?
Keeping abreast of the extraordinary number of new shops and products on the market and checking out the newcomers at the multitude of fairs and exhibitions in this sector.
What’s your home style?
Cluttered, antique, and has grown organically.
Where do you see the business going from here?
It’s going to become even more useful to our users: as more and more companies realize that TheHouseDirectory.com offers the most efficient and cost effective form of advertising they will join us. And with more listings we will offer an even more comprehensive showcase for house and garden decoration.
Visit
www.thehousedirectory.com
17 November 09
