Farewell beloved Judy's Book

October 24, 2007 at 8:55 AM

For those in the U.S. and especially those in the Seattle area you may have heard of a site called Judy’s Book. Judy’s Book started out from a small book of personal notes on local restaurants, plumbers, landscapers and more was shared with a large circle of friends over the years. The book grew beyond it’s original single source format and eventually Andy and Chris brought the book to the web.

If you ask either of them they will tell you that local is not easy. After all they were in a market filled with companies like CitySearch, Yahoo, Google, and eventually sites like Yelp. Having see the site succeed in some areas and struggle in others Judy’s Book changed its focus from local community contributed content to online and offline deals. This was by no means an easy transition for the company or for it’s loyal users, including myself.

The company announced yesterday that it will be closing it’s doors, most of it’s staff was let go sometime yesterday. It’s really sad to see such a great site with such passionate users close it’s doors.

This should serve as a reminder for everyone out there who is creating local sites, it’s not easy. Special detail needs to be paid to the design and IA of these sites and most importantly to the user’s needs. Having consulted on IA for Judy’s Book and having architected sites like Tipped I can only say that major changes to the site’s focus that impacts the users needs to be done ever so subtle and over a long period of time to allow for those users to adjust. Remember, it’s users we serve, not the investors, not the profits, not the technology and not the competition.

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