Please Review My ZIP Code Demographics Site

[sarabrown]

Hi, everyone. My husband and I are launching a site for researching ZIP code demographics. The site allows you to search neighborhoods based on demographic criteria or ZIP codes. So if you already know a ZIP code, you can look up the demographics for that ZIP code. But if you don't know the ZIP code, you can just enter some criteria (like median income greater than $150k), and the tool will give you a list of all ZIP codes matching that criteria. You can search using multiple criteria.

For example, the link below is a search for California neighborhoods making over $100k, with at least half its residents being college graduates, at least 5% Hispanic, and median age between 35 and 45:

ZIP Code Demographics Search

I could imagine this being useful for people in Real Estate, Direct Marketing, or those who are just curious about their neighbors.

Please let me know if you find the site useful, pointless, interesting, boring, etc.

Thanks in advance!

[torka]

I like it. It's clean and straightforward. Not a lot of superfluous bells and whistles that would just make the page harder to use. Easy to figure out what to do and how to do it. The example searches are a good guide to help someone get started.

I personally found it interesting just to search for various things. As a marketer, I would find it interesting for a B2C campaign. Maybe not so much for B2B, as it seems to be focused on the residents of a ZIP code, not businesses in that ZIP code.

Gets a from me.

--Torka

[Logan]

Me too. I think it is interesting. I'll be keeping it in mind, although not too sure on specific applications to use it in my daily work. I liked the example searches also, do you have a function that allows someone to do a side-by-side comparison of multiple zip codes. I found myself comparing two different locations I was curious about.

From a promotion standpoint, I would consider search engine optimization. The search engines don't input zip codes into forms like you have, so I would consider how you can provide results that are easily indexed by the search engines and then optimized based on the keywords related to the geo-location.

I'd also like to see more on the site, or know more about the source of your data. How old/stale are these demographics. That is relevant to me from a market research standpoint, and I can't tell from the site. If this data is within a year old, that is one thing for me ... if it comes from the 2000 census a whole other consideration for me when interpreting the data provided.

Good work. Well done!!

[sarabrown]

Thanks for the feedback, Torka and Logan!

The demographics data is indeed taken from the 2000 Census, so it's quite old. That's why we gotta keep the site free.

Will tell our resident technical person (nephew) about your suggestions. Thanks again!

[Zafar Ahmed]

I think thats really cool one , I will use it more and more frequently and will ask all to use it too. I think this is very useful application.