SB-based ParentClick rolls out new website
It’s truly a family affair, but it’s Santa Barbara-based and growing online nationwide.
It’s truly a family affair, but it’s Santa Barbara-based and growing online nationwide.
ParentClick.com this week rolled out its updated website, which features about 1,700 businesses and nonprofit groups that mostly cater to families.
“The event was to explain how the site works now,” said Rachael Ross Steidl, referring to Tuesday night’s mixer at the downtown Business First Bank office where almost 100 business people showed up.
At the beginning of this year, the ParentClick.com network expanded with a newly designed website to create better search options, a member community and a social networking presence, Ms. Steidl said.
“This online community and parenting resource has grown from a handful of parents to more than 40,000 parent members with more joining daily,” she said.
The idea behind ParentClick.com is to centralize resources for parents, while creating what Ms. Steidl calls “affordable marketing packages” so that businesses and nonprofits can reach the family demographic.
“Santa Barbara has a huge family demographic,” Ms. Steidl said. “We’re year-round.”
The website maintains a parent network that reflects each community to provide parents choices when they need resources, such as summer camps, athletic programs and preschools, she said.
“We have about 500 businesses and nonprofits in Santa Barbara that paid for premium listings on ParentClick.com,” she said. “Our goal is to educate businesses about how they can reach out to Santa Barbara.”
The website offers a guide for families in communities across the country, Ms. Steidl said.
“It has been changing the way parents research local family resources for the past eight years by providing local parenting information in more than 20 U.S. markets.”
ParentClick.com lists 500 family-oriented events monthly on its calendars and each year sponsors more than 100 nonprofit events to help raise more awareness and support for organizations.
“Most nonprofits in Santa Barbara are listed” on the website, she said.
Ms. Steidl is a Santa Barbara native and a mother of three girls. She worked in marketing and management before she had children and holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University.
In 2002 she started the SBParent.com website for families in Santa Barbara. As a new mother, she said, she was motivated to create a website to support families when she saw parents struggling to find resources for their children.
In 2004 she launched ParentClick.com, which expanded her enterprise to multiple communities nationwide as a “one-stop, web-based research portal for families,” she said.
Free ParentClick.com membership allows members access to all pages on the website and the option to post comments and recommend businesses. Its members have access to a “personal dashboard” where they can track events, resources, and classifieds, Ms. Steidl said.
The website relies on local community editors to provide content and sales. Mrs. Steidl hires editorial consultants who are informed about the community.
At Tuesday’s mixer, Ms. Steidl said she is developing applications for handheld devices, or “apps,” so members can more easily get information.
Among those attending Tuesday’s mixer was Debra Andaloro, who said she has known Ms. Steidl for a dozen years and praised the website.
“It’s great to have the consolidated information,” Ms. Andaloro said. “I go there if I need a quite fix.”
Category: Media