Business Directory Ideas & Questions
Hi friends,
In reply to a twitter post that asked for ideas, here goes some of mine as I have seen many bz directories out there and many have good features but lack some fundamental ones in order to become effective:
- Search by: keyword, category, city, city sections (neighborhoods) Some very efficient
- Front page with: Featured (paid sponsors) ads, Featured (by most comments and/or stars) This way, we can create a business directory where people come for the reliability of it because of the amount of comments/feedback just like what eBay does. It gives new customers confidence about a business. That also causes the businesses to keep active in the website and never drop their membership. That would also cause the businesses that are not there yet to feel like they need to be there as well in order to build some reputation too. In a few words, I believe eBay's feedback system is very powerful for the business and for future customers.
- after searching: (gym - for example) it would appear a map with the icons of the gyms nearby. using google maps, just as it is with classipress, but now it would also show all the related searches on the front page.
- ability to integrate it with classipress, coupon and job themes so it would become a website where people would go not only for local businesses directory but would bring even more users searching for jobs, classifieds and coupons. That would also be a good deal for appthemes. I would definitely buy all of them to make a more wholesome website somewhat similar to
http://www.demodirectory.com/index.php
- here is one nice directory:
http://www.grstar.com/Carlos_OKellys_Mexican_Cafe.html
- nice directory review driven
http://www.thomsonlocal.com/
- nowadays review has become real big and can influence greatly new customers. so there could be a feature where reviews/stars bump a bz up on the listing. It would be simply a "search by popularity" feature. So besides paying for being listed, the way they would get "on the first pages" they would need lots of good reviews. Or become a featured sponsor. All this would bring not only income to the site owner but also would create a commitment from the business as many of them may list their business and just abandon it there and thus be discouraged to renew their membership later when they don't "feel" they are having much return from it. But if we get them to be committed to getting customers'reviews, they will be building up not only reputation but also a strong tie with the directory website.
- a lot of classipress features are nice for a bz directory
Hope that helps
Originally Posted by jomarkosabel
