411Hometown Publisher 1.01

Over 80% of US households are online. The print telephone directory is making way for a new model combining print with web-based advertising. If you need a solution that offers the maximum return for you, your advertisers and consumers, 411Hometown has the answer.

411Hometown Publisher is intended specifically for users of DR BookMan™ publishing software. Developed by long-time DR BookMan™ users, our product allows you to reproduce your books in an online format that preserves the ease of use of print directories without the cost and complication of most electronic methods. Current online publishing options include large, national search engines and page by page PDF reproductions. However, search engine results are notoriously hit or miss while PDF reproductions of print books are slow and awkward to use. 411Hometown Publisher brings local, easy and fast to online yellow pages.

User-Friendly Online Directories - Local Information for the Local Market!

Your print directories are the most reliable, locally focussed and in depth information sources in their area. Your online directories will be the same dependable source of truly local information. Whether you publish 1, 3, 10 or 50 print directories, each will have its own online edition presenting the same local information for the same local market. Each online edition will be accessible through its own URL and will feature links to your other directories. Your online directory will be easy to use - just like your print edition. It will have a separate local database for each of three fundamental sections - residential white pages, business white pages, and yellow pages. Each section is easily searchable and presents its results in a scrollable page format - easy to read and easy to refine your search by looking up or down the online page.

This user-friendly presentation eliminates the two most common drawbacks to current online books - the "your search results show 600 matches for 'Jones' - try again" - so irritating to users of the national search engines and the "trying to read a newspaper through a soda straw" feeling common to the PDF-based efforts.

User-friendliness also means being specifically designed for clear, simple use with the iPhone and other internet capable cell phones. Research shows most mobile internet users avoid the national search engines and rely instead on their own list of bookmarked favorites. 411Hometown makes it easy for your online directories to be right at the top of that list!

Ads, Web Links and Coupons!

411Hometown Publisher makes your online editions advertiser-friendly as well as user-friendly. Any customers ad can be accessed by the public from both the white pages and the yellow pages. Within the yellow pages, that same ad can be accessed from any heading containing the customers listing info - not just the single anchor heading. If your customer chooses, they can include a direct link button with their ad so consumers can go straight to the customers website. The link appears everywhere the customers listings/ad appear in both the white and the yellow pages. Advertisers can also provide a printable discount coupon for use by consumers, accessible either alphabetically or by yellow page category. Coupons can be printed and redeemed by the public as needed without cutting up the book or running out of the "Good Coupons". For the public, they are an excellent incentive to use your online edition. For your advertisers, they are an effective traffic builder and tracking method. For you, they are a potential revenue enhancer.

Why Not Google?

A number of products are now in the market which aim at having local publishers sell Google Ad Words and search engine optimization plans directly to advertisers. There are several problems with these plans. Google, Yahoo! and other universal search engines are widely and correctly held to be poor at providing genuinely local information. They are great if you want to scour the entire web and find the latest video but cannot match even the simplest local directory in either breadth or depth of coverage regarding any specific market. This is one of several reasons cited in studies showing mobile users tend to avoid them in favor of previously bookmarked favorites. Re-selling their service to our advertisers abandons our strong role as principal providers of local market information to the public. It encourages our advertisers to rely on an inferior product and reduces our role to that of local commissioned agents for the search giants. It ties us, as agents, to a product over which we have no control, no real ability to promise results to our advertisers and no influence regarding future development. At best, this is a poor business plan; at worst, it is a road map to extinction. 411Hometown Publisher gives directory publishers the ability to compete head to head with the search engines and defeat them not on a world or national scale but in the only area that really matters to your advertisers: in your hometown market.

You can now look your advertisers in the eye and say, "We can't help you in another country, another state or another city, but if most of your business comes from this local area (as it does for the vast majority of local businesses) we can do the best possible job for you, combining the ease of user-friendly web access with our traditional outstanding coverage of this local area."