Published: April 21, 2008 11:48 am      

Chamber says Web site paying off

Only six months after launching JohnstownBusiness.com, the Greater Johnstown-Cambria County Chamber of Commerce Web site that features about 700 local companies has proven its worth.

After going "live" in early September, the site was boasting about 2,000 visitors per month. By March, the site was averaging about 13,000 monthly hits.

"It exploded," said Mike Danchanko, president of digital.iway Inc. and technological mastermind behind the chamber's site. "It has become more than I could ever hope for."

The chamber has a printed directory that is published annually.

Danchanko, who was part of the organization's technology committee, felt the need to keep business local as much as possible.

"We decided to highlight companies online to make business-to-business relationships easier," Danchanko said. "Since we launched, we have been growing exponentially. It has become a Web of business."

The chamber's desire to launch the site was further bolstered by the results of a survey conducted two years ago by the Chambers of the Alleghenies, a regional partnership of six county chambers, including Cambria and Somerset.

The survey polled chamber member businesses within the six counties and produced some shocking results. Roughly $7 million in business-to-business revenues were leaving the six-county area on a daily basis.

Bob Layo, president and CEO of the chamber, said that with Cambria as the largest of the six counties, it only made sense that a significant portion of those funds were exiting from that area.

"When we started looking at the survey with the other counties, we figured out that it would only be a small step to build this Web site that encourages companies to buy local," Layo said.

"That fits right in with the mission of a chamber. When you keep business and money local, it creates more opportunities and more jobs."

Funding for the project was bolstered by a $15,000 grant through the state Department of Community and Economic Development. The goal is to develop the engine into a self-sustaining entity through advertising revenue.

It took about a year to design and get the site off the ground, Danchanko said. And the time and expense has been worth it - even to businesses who are listed on the site but do not have Web sites of their own.

"It's exposing businesses in a way they could have never attained before," Danchanko said. "Businesses without Web sites are getting marketed at no cost."

He said about 20 percent of traffic comes from other referring Web sites, and about the same percentage referrals and direct entry of the site address into the toolbar.

The remaining 60 percent is coming from search engines, with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL as the top ones.

"Part of the reason we put it together as a Web-based search engine is because (Danchanko) said that the bigger search engines like Google like to look for other search engines because it makes the search process easier and will drive more people to your site," Layo said.

"So not only is this helping to keep business local, but it's bringing a lot of people from outside the region to look here virtually and see what we have to offer."

Danchanko tracks the searches and to date, close to 100,000 local matches have been recorded where a visitor went to the site, performed a search and reviewed a local company detail page and information.

"That's a really good thing," Danchanko said.

"It's not like we've been online for 10 years, and it shows people have utilized the search from categories and from typing in terms.

"It's the beginning of a local search market," Danchanko added.

"I didn't think it would grow as fast as it did."