Five years ago, we set out to create an open, independent listing platform for local businesses and organisations.
Since then we’ve offered a free listing plan enabling advertisers to have a dedicated page on the MyChurchdown website. Along the way, we created apps for iOS & Android that allowed our viewers to access information quickly and we had a few website makeovers too.
However websites such as Google, Facebook and brand websites have continued to grow on a larger scale and we realise that some of the information within the MyChurchdown Listing sections is out of date and inaccurate.
A large proportion of visitors to MyChurchdown use our online platform to purchase event tickets, read news articles and for information on local events.
We have taken the decision to close the listing section ‘Explore’ of MyChurchdown to allow us to focus more on local news content, events and the creation of an event ticketing platform for local businesses/organisations.
We will replace the listing sections with ‘Our Advertisers’ which will contain links to third party websites/social media pages.
We realise that this news may have a negative impact to some of our advertisers who don’t have a social media listing or online website. MyChurchdown will work with the very small proportion of affected advertisers on a case by case basis.
Timescales?
We will stop the creation of new listings on 01/02/2019.
On Saturday 9th March we will move MyChurchdown BETA to live and continue to offer the listing section in read only mode until 01/04/2019. This timeline allows users plenty of time to save any content they require.
Will this change impact magazine advertising?
Our magazine distributions will continue throughout the year, this change only impacts our Online platform. We will no longer offer an online listing but will instead contain a link to a third party website.
I don’t have a website/social media page.
MyChurchdown will work with impacted advertisers who currently have a listing on MyChurchdown on a case by case basis – this will include the setup of a business listing with Google and/or the creation of a social media business page.
Other Changes.
On Saturday 9th March we will put our BETA website to production – a re-designed website with primary focus on news content and events.
On 09/03/2019 we will stop future updates to our existing Android & iOS Apps.