Every business is looking to get in front of its target audience. Outdoor digital signage, and indeed, all forms of digital signage, work quite well as part of any marketing strategy. Listing in business directories is another way to get seen.
Here are some great ideas to help you create and launch a more appealing directory For businesses in this niche.
Covered Topics
1. Build on Your Brand
Branding is a crucial element for physical and online businesses alike. Invest in your branding, and you will no doubt stand out.
To that end, engage experts in designing the logo for your listing’s website. It should be a professional and accurate representation of your brand. First impressions matter. Users are likely to turn away from a directory with a logo that doesn’t look professional.
Also, be intentional with choosing your directory’s domain name. The best pick would be a name that is easy to remember and resembles your business name. Similarly, you will want to avoid numbers and hyphens in your domain name.
In the same way, have your directory’s theme match with the rest of your website. This should be fairly easy to do with the right directory plugin.
2. Use More Pictures
Humans are wired to be visual. Grab users’ attention and create a more appealing directory by adding more pictures to your listings. Images break the monotony of a text-rich online directory. Consequently, your content becomes easier to read, which will, by extension, impact if users choose to look through your directory listings.
On the whole, business owners must be careful and use only relevant, high-quality pictures. However, avoid blurry pictures, as well as stretched or warped images.
3. Keep it Local
A great way to create a more appealing directory is by localizing your listings. No one is looking to go too much out of their way to buy a good or get a service.
On the other hand, a local business directory will be a hit, as everyone looks forward to the convenience of finding a service provider who is close to them. Whether a user is looking for a service provider in healthcare or real estate, they will always appreciate the convenience of proximity.
To this end, you can focus on a neighborhood or a part of town. Have several of such directory sites for different locales instead of having one extensive directory covering the whole city.
4. Make Navigation Easier with Simple Categories
Having too many categories to your business directory listings is never a good idea. It can lead to a bad user experience as users may get confused with all the categories.
Users will more than likely get overwhelmed when choosing from so many categories and subcategories. Indeed, this is the general feeling according to user reviews. Thus, keep it simple and make navigation from the homepage that much easier by limiting the number of categories.
5. Optimize Page Speeds
Slow loading speeds are guaranteed to increase exit rates on your business directory. While the functionality of your website may be intact, slow loading speeds certainly take away from the user experience. Therefore, track and optimize these loading speeds to deliver the best user experience.
Also worth noting is that Google and other search engines consider page loading speed and other Google ranking factors when ranking search results.
6. Give More Insights about the Listings
Stand out by doing more than just providing business names accompanied by a phone number and other contact information. You want to be more than just another yellow page on the internet. Instead, provide pertinent information about each listing, so users don’t have to go back to search engines to find out more.
What’s more, add Google Maps, and you will be on the right track to creating a more appealing directory. Including the interactive map feature will help users to easily find the listed addresses of each business.
Give your users a look at user reviews and ratings on Yelp and other such platforms. This way, a user will have an idea of what to expect of their interaction with the business. Actually, you can make each listing on your directory more detailed using custom fields. The best WordPress directory will support these fields.
7. Leverage Social Media
Use it right, and social media can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. In fact, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google my Business, yahoo, and other social networks have many users. Create and manage your presence on these platforms to promote your business directory website.
After creating a page on the social platforms under your business name, add a link back to your directory. You can highlight a few local businesses and service providers featured in your directory, as well as coupons and other incentives. Again, you want to update engaging content, including images on social networks.
In conclusion, you can create a more appealing directory with the highlighted tips. Do so, and you will undoubtedly attract more businesses to list on your directory and have more traffic from users.
