A thank you & an update on our road map

Firstly, thanks to everyone who's visited Urban.com.au so far.  

We started in early March, doubled the amount of people using the site in April and 12 days into May, double the amount of people have already visited the site compared to the same time last month.

Special thanks goes directly to the industry participants who have allowed us to expand their respective project pages with more renders and directly placing their marketing material with us - it's our ongoing goal to obtain richer content about Melbourne's development scene as it enhances everyone's experience on Urban.com.au.

To this point, we've been marketing the Urban.com.au brand almost exclusively via social media and have recently been dabbling with some minimal Google Search and Display network advertising.  In the next few weeks we will be kick-starting a larger, more traditional, marketing campaign to get the word out that Urban.com.au should be the first place people visit to start researching an apartment purchase, the first place to come to see what's proposed in your local area and the first place to come to discuss our urban future.

We do appreciate every effort our exisiting user base contributes have provided in getting the Urban.com.au brand awareness out there and we ask you keep on posting comments in articles and the forum, liking posts on facebook and retweeting our tweets.

We'll also be publishing our first user survey in the next few weeks - we need to know how people are using the site and what they'd like to see improved and I'd be very greatful that as many of you fill out the survey when we publish it.

Mark, myself and Chris all volunteer our time to operate this site - and we've decided Sundays are a no-editorial content day (day jobs + UM work = long hours during the week).  We are still open to expressions of interest to anyone who would like to volunteer time and write on any range of topics - we generally pursue the following pattern:  

• Mondays: Development / Any new planning application information.  
• Tuesdays:  Environment Sustainability and Design.  
• Wednesdays: Transport.  
• Thursdays: Policy / Cutlural topics.  
• Friday:  Op-Ed.  
• Saturdays: Visual Melbourne.  
• Sundays: open to anything.

You can write as frequently or infrequently as you like - the pattern above is not set in concrete, its a simply a general guide. If you have a topic you're passionate about and want to share with the Urban.com.au community, use the Contact Us form and we'll get started.  Urban.com.au / Alamar AV Communications Pty Ltd doesn't assume any copyright over any material you provide and you're free to link to external sites with further information.       

Students, Industry participants, Academia and the community at large: all are welcome to use Urban.com.au as a platform to expose your ideas, opinions and products.  

So again, thanks very much to everyone who has contributed to our growth thus far and we look forward to seeing much more growth and a greater diversity of content on Urban.com.au going forward.