About the Harpenden Directory

The Harpenden Directory was born out of an idea to develop a website to promote a selection of businesses based locally in Harpenden’s 65 High Street Offices. In the early stages we had very limited data on local businesses so many long months where spent documenting shops, trades and businesses in Harpenden and the surrounding villages.
Our main aim was to have one focal point for local people to be able to source products and services locally thus helping to Keep it Local. Our objective is to encourage residents to look locally, before venturing out of the towns and villages to help maintain the vibrancy of our High Streets.

The website was launched in 2009 and gave businesses the opportunity to have a free listing as well as being able to Enhance their listing allowing them to add further information about their company such as Web links, email, Testimonials, pictures etc.

Over the course of 2009 we worked closely with local businesses to ensure they were listed and currently have over 1100 on the directory. They have the opportunity for a free listing or the Enhanced which is a paid for listing thus keeping it inclusive.
Our next step was in collaboration with Harpenden Town Council who wanted to promote a Keep it Local campaign to the local community. We joined forces to use the Harpenden Directory as the vehicle to reach the wider community along with window stickers, mug’s, pens and note pads as promotional aids to raise awareness with local retailers.
Following the successful data collection for the online directory we decided to take this information and produce a paperback version for 2009/10. This was to turn out to be a great success with 116 pages with over 1000 businesses listed and distributed to 17,500 homes in Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Redbourn. The enquiries for local businesses exceeded our expectations. It helped us secure many more online advertisers, many choosing us over the well-established Yellow Pages and Thompsons Directories.