Five years ago, when Elizabeth and I first started StyleBlueprint, we dreamed of incorporating a guide to our city to allow readers to navigate Nashville in a curated, edited way. We never gave up that goal and today we are proud to say that we have officially launched our online SB Guide!
What is it? Simply put, SB Guide is a beautiful, easy to use, photo rich guide to Nashville’s best businesses, with up-to-date, accurate information (yes, we’ve called each and every number!). We have spent thousands of hours photographing, writing, editing and programming our guide to showcase our city in a way that both residents and tourists will enjoy. If you enjoy StyleBlueprint, you will absolutely love having all this information at your fingertips, literally. Whether you’re using your desktop computer, laptop, tablet or mobile phone, our SB Guide is perfectly scaled. And, this is just round one. We have lots of exciting updates and features to come.
Sample SB Guide homepage: sbguide.com:
Everytime you come to sbguide.com, the businesses featured on the homepage will appear in a different order, allowing you to always have a fresh look at Nashville’s best businesses.
Sample page from SB Guide:
You can see that there is lots of information that is easy to use, right at your fingertips. Pictured here is a basic desktop display.
How SB Guide looks on a mobile phone:
Our site is dynamic — it automatically resizes to fit your device. Here is a sample of how our SB Guide appears on an iPhone.
Why the SB Guide and what makes us different?
- We are flooded with emails asking for suggestions on everything from where to buy shoes, to the perfect restaurant with a patio to host a dinner, to a new place to workout, to where to get a good facial. We’ve taken these questions and created a guide to give you answers.
- Nashville has over 30,000 businesses. We wanted a guide that only included what we perceive to be the best of these, and to keep the size manageable. Right now, we have about 400 businesses in our SB Guide. We’ve pounded the streets for many years and now there is a way to better access our picks on where to go and what to do.
- We all know that a picture is worth a 1000 words. Instead of making yet another guide that was heavy on words, we set out to make a pretty guide, a photo-driven guide, one that matched the aesthetics of StyleBlueprint. You can now explore Nashville’s bricks and mortar businesses, as well as some of our favorite interior designers, builders and landscape architects, from wherever you happen to be.
- We think it’s important to say that we’ve included both paying and non-paying companies, as otherwise this wouldn’t be a true service to you, our readers and to our city. Paid entries have an enhanced version of their SB Guide page and receive extra marketing benefits that we provide them, but we think highly of all businesses in our guide. We want all of the best places included, paying or not. That’s just the way we roll, and we know you expect nothing less.
Neighborhoods:
Want to discover where to go in 12South, Green Hills, Midtown? Go to sbguide.com and use the neighborhood filter, for example “12South,” and voila! Here’s a sample of what will pop up:
Click any business for a full page of information on the business. It’s the perfect way to figure out how to plan your in-town adventures: eating, shopping, salons and more.
Reservations made easy:
How about when you want to go to a restaurant in, say, Germantown and you need reservations? Click our “reservations” button, straight from the restaurant’s SB Guide page, and … there ya go! Reservations made simple.
Breakfast, Mexican, family friendly?
Here’s a situation: You need to meet someone for breakfast and you can’t even begin to figure out where to go. Go to Food & Drink and choose “restaurants”, click “neighborhoods” (for restaurants some specialty filters are found there, as well) and click “breakfast.” Ta-da! Choices galore, all with pretty photos to entice you.
All these options, and more, pop up after choosing ‘breakfast.’
Boutiques, skincare, interior design and more:
Need to know who has wedding registries? Where to shop women’s fashions? Jewelry? Kids’ clothes? No problem. SB Guide will not let you down. Here is an example of what popped up after choosing “FASHION” and then clicking “Womens.”
From here, you could choose a neighborhood, or “locally owned” to refine further. Again, each time you filter, the businesses display in a new sequence to keep the guide fresh and interesting.
No crowdsourcing, comments or outside reviews:
So, why no crowdsourcing — you know, all those comments/reviews about businesses found on other online resources? Plenty of other sources offer that; there is nothing new for us to add to this arena. Since we’ve already taken over 30,000 Nashville area businesses and broken it down to about 400, you are assured that our guide only has the city’s best businesses, based on our expertise. Now, your only worry is where to explore next. No more wasted time reading about where NOT to go.
SB Guide … Super easy to find:
You can search for sbguide.com in your web browser of choice, OR if you are on StyleBlueprint.com, look at the top of any page and you will see several tabs: EVERYDAY, FINDS, HAPPENINGS and, now, SB GUIDE. Click “SB GUIDE” and you are in.
Use these tabs to access our EVERYDAY articles, our Daily FINDS, our HAPPENINGS, and our SB GUIDE.
So much more to come!
Look for us to add more businesses, neighborhoods and categories soon. Our SB Guide is only going to get better and better and we know it is not yet complete. Our next few months will bring more features (and we can’t wait to unveil our app!). It’s so exciting to be on the ground floor of our new product with you.
If you see that we overlooked a fabulous business, let us know. We’re human and I’m sure we’ve unintentionally left out a few of the best.
Look for the SB Guide to come to each of our SB cities in 2014: Louisville, Birmingham, Memphis and Atlanta. Then, you’ll be able to travel our region with our guide to lead the way on “where to go and what to do.”
Ready to get started? Come on over to sbguide.com
