International business directory: 2012 year in review

Dec. 27, 2012 - PRLog -- 2012 was a very successful one for Colorado Springs-based CityStar ( http://CityStar.com -- CityStar Group, Inc).  As the year began, the company's network of 302 city directory websites were sucessfully marketed through saturation broadcast TV and radio commercials in major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Seattle and Sacramento, CA. The ads drove traffic to the whole system, particularly for the city sites representing markets where the commercials aired.

In February, CityStar's web servers were replaced with new, multiprocessor units, resulting in faster page load times and streamlined web management.

In May, the long-awaited site redesign by Ricky Romero was rolled out, and it was greeted with praise from clients, users and critics.  Besides the obvious branding and design changes, the removal of all display advertising, new database and software improvements created a very clean, user friendly environment, faster page load times, and this brought higher traffic counts, longer user sessions, and extremely low bounce rates.  Subsequently, listing sales increased to a four year high, and all site metrics have continuously improved since.

During the summer, the company negotiated with a multi-billion euro French company for the sale of certain CityStar assets.  No accord was reached, but the company's mission was reinforced by this process.

In October, CityStar opened an operations center in downtown Colorado Springs with new furnishings, equipment and infrastructure.  It is located in Craddock Commercial Real Estate's building, one block south of the Better Business Bureau on Wahsatch Avenue.  

Finally, in December, the long-planned spinoff of CityStar's ARG! Cartoon Animation division was completed.  This was a big step forward, giving the company total focus on its directory sites and their marketing efforts.  CityStar's team is looking forward to achieving even more success in 2013 and beyond.

The company was founded in Colorado Springs, Colorado in December, 1994. Within a year, a simple website was posted, and the domain citystar.com was registered in December, 1996. In 1998, the site was first organized into a local Colorado Springs business directory. In December, 1999, CityStar was established as a C corp in Colorado.

CityStar first became a federally registered trademark in 2002. That same year, starting with 33 sites in Colorado, 302 unique city websites were gradually added for cities in 47 U.S. states, Canada, Great Britain and 18 other countries.


Contact:
Artie Romero, president
(646) 257-5845
romero@citystar.com