Our best release ever: Meet eDirectory Software v11.3!
What’s New in eDirectory v11.3
1. New import tool
Support for Excel files
Flexible template with columns matching functionality
CSV separator selection
Support to import up to 20 categories per listing
Improved help messages
Performance improvements
2. New buttons added to HTML editor to allow users to change the font, size, and colors of custom contents
3. Widget Featured Categories enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Restaurant
4. Widget Recent Articles enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Restaurant
5. Widget Browse by Category and Location plus Square Banner enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Restaurant
6. Widget Recent Reviews enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Restaurant
7. Widget 5-featured listings enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Doctor
8. Widget Browse by Locations plus Square Banners enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Doctor
9. Widget Popular deals plus Wide Skyscraper banner enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Doctor
10. Widget 5-Recent Articles enabled for themes Default, Wedding, and Doctor
11. Widget 6-Featured Listings + 2 Square Banners enabled for themes Default, Restaurant, and Doctor
12. Widget Recent posts enabled for themes Default, Restaurant, and Doctor
13. Added option for site manager to edit the background image of the following widgets
Faq Header
Search Box Blog Detail
Sitemap Header
Sign up Text
Search Bar
Search Box for Reviews page
Search Box Module Detail
Search Box
14. Added option to replicate changes to other pages on the widget “Events Calendar”
15. Added ability for site manager to change the content of invoices header and footer
Read the full list of +130 enhancements of v11.3 here.
For active clients looking to take advantage of the latest and greatest eDirectory.com has to offer, simply fill out the Upgrade request form found here or contact your account executive.
For new clients looking to launch their online Enterprise with all you see here and much more, please request a demo here, or call us directly at +1-800-630-4694, or send an email to Sales@eDirectory.com.
Jan 2018 quick heads up: Apple revised this rule and our team is assisting our customers to be sure we can keep offering our integrated iOS app builder.
In June 2017, Apple added the Rule 4.2.6 in its publishing guidelines for the App Store. The claimed purpose at that time was to clean-up the store, removing clone apps, spam apps and all other applications that were trying to mislead the App Store user.
Here’s the Rule 4.2.6: “Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected”, see the full Guideline here.
This rule doesn’t affect only eDirectory apps. All companies in the same industry around the world were directly affected.
Since then, we’ve been working and testing options to keep offering iOS apps to our customers. For us, November was the month when app rejections really started happening so we’ve taken some measures to protect our customers, reflecting the Rule 4.2.6:
We stopped standard compilations for iOS. Users are no longer able to retrieve an .ipa file to submit a new app
We updated all mentions about iOS app builder in our commercial offers
Apple insists that there will be no exception to the application of Rule 4.2.6. If they flex their rules this feature can be fully re-integrate into eDirectory platform. Apps published before this rule will continue to work normally unless there is a new intervention from Apple. Updates of existing apps are still being accepted by App Store.
It is important to point out that Android operating smartphones are more than 90% of the market so we believe that these temporary changes will have little impact to the end users and to our customer’s business.
Technical questions can be addressed to support@edirectory.com or contact our sales team at sales@edirectory.com.
How to create a directory website: essential tips to launch a successful directory
Choose the type of directory you will launch.
Choose the technology partner for your directory software
Define your Top Level and Sub-Level Categories
Create your Membership Levels or Pricing Plan options
Create or import your first listings
Create quality content
Optimize and publicize
Include new features
1. Choose the type of directory you will launch.
The great thing is, a directory website can be launched for almost any industry or purpose with an opportunity for members to add all kinds of great content like videos, articles, special deals, and photo galleries. There are several types of online directories that you can choose to create. The most common ones are local business directories, professional service provider directories, and membership directories or association websites. To make it easier, you can start in the area that you have the most experience in or the location where you are residing. For example, if your city does not have a strong local business or tourism guide, you have a good opportunity to create an online community that generates recurring revenue. If you are a special service provider, you can create a directory for your industry, starting with you and your colleagues and ultimately making some money from your competitors while featuring your business at the same time. Or perhaps choose an interest or topic that you are passionate about and create a national or international directory website or membership community around that. There’s room for a lot of innovation with the online directory business plan.
2. Choose the technology partner for your directory software
There are several different approaches here. You can, for example, hire a developer and a web designer to build your own directory script, yet the chances are they will most likely use an inexpensive off-the-shelf product that they charge you a lot of money to maintain. Worse yet, they disappear or get a bigger job and you’re left behind with a directory solution you can’t use. Another approach is that can go with a low-cost high-maintenance option like a WordPress directory theme and WordPress directory plug-in. They still require you have someone with technical knowledge on your payroll to maintain. Also, the difficulty to build a directory with WordPress is that WordPress was not built for directories, it was made for publishing blogs, so you’ll have to invest a lot of time patching various components together and it is not best-suited to scale for a powerful directory solution. With eDirectory you can create your professional directory website quickly and easily. The monthly plans make it affordable to start quickly with all the essential features for a successful directory website right where you need them so you can focus on the directory business plan rather than back-end maintenance.
3. Define your Top Level and Sub-Level Categories
A directory website is really just a large amount of information (business listings or member profiles) that is highly organized for visitors to search, browse, and connect. With top-levels and perhaps various sub-levels of categories for visitors to search through, online directory websites allow users to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If you need general business categories, eDirectory will provide them free of charge. You can also add them manually. 25 top-level categories with an average 10 sub-levels for each is generally sufficient, yet with eDirectory you can go down to 5 sub-sub levels for a very granular search experience. Your members or business listing owners can also be charged to appear in more categories, which in essence creates more visibility and this impressions and conversion. This is another great way to build a “ladder” with your pricing levels to encourage the sales of your most premium membership level, by limiting the number of categories your directory website listing owners will appear in.
4. Create your Membership Levels or Pricing Plan options
Early on the name of the game is to get people joining your online community website, so a Free membership level is highly recommended. Free members add a ton of value early on as they will contribute content (although limited), provide invaluable feedback, share their listing to their social media, and may upgrade to a paid listing down the road if you really give them some quality attention from the beginning. With setting up the remainder of your pricing levels, make sure to have the top level get everything under the sun to really encourage purchase, even do some promotional discounts on the first 100 paid sign-ups with 20-50% off, perhaps even free banner ads for a month or two. With the pricing level(s) in the middle, make sure they get enough to warrant the price they’re paying for yet to limit or restrict the most valuable directory website features, so maybe they can only add 1 special “deal” to your deals engine for example. Do some testing knowing that nothing is set in stone and that you can adapt your directory website pricing and update your directory business plan as you learn and grow.
5. Create or import your first listings
If you have a list of business or members to import, that’s great! With the eDirectory.com directory solution all you need to do is use the import template and you’re ready to go. You can also add a few listings manually for businesses or members you hope will join. Start including several listings and gradually add more. You can start with a goal to include, for example, 10 listings per day. Once members join, encourage them to share their listings to social media to gain more visibility to your directory website. As your online community starts to grow and get noticed by people, they will come to you and create their own listings by themselves. Until you reach that point, you need to assert by yourself or hire someone to do it for you, if you plan to scrape a few public sites for example. In this other blog post, we shared a few other marketing ideas as well.
6. Create quality content
Publishing and curating high-quality content is an important factor to bring new and qualified visitors to your site. If you have a local directory, talk about what makes that local directory business unique and highlight its qualities. Think about what type of content would be useful to your readers and write it down, schedule based on priority, and get started with a content-creation schedule for your directory website that you are comfortable with, like 1-2 hours per week for example. You can also invite and encourage contributors and members to add content to your online community website. If you have an online directory website for specialized dentists for example, they usually will be happy to contribute valuable content to your directory solution so they can start to be seen as authority on that subject, showcase their practice, and help visitors get to know them a bit better before making the connection; all of which helps bring them more views and traffic.
7. Optimize and publicize
Once you start the process of quality content and attracting target customers, keep it going by consistently asking yourself these questions:
* How can I make my directory website so appealing that members will visit and want to join my online community and contribute content as a paying member? Take the lead! Build a directory website you would want to join. With our easy directory software at eDirectory, you can get started right away on adding all kinds of great content like blog posts, articles, industry or local events, even classified ads that can be used for all kinds of purposes like jobs, business opportunities, and even products to be showcased on your directory website.
* How can I make sure that the listings have enough depth to ensure a high utilization for directory website visitors? Listings with just title and phone number are less attractive and useful than listings with photos, videos, maps, deals, classifieds, and descriptions. Invite every new member to create content, talk about their mission/vision, and share a video about themselves and what they do.
* How can I monetize my directory? Online directory websites have many ways of generating revenue, which really adds to your directory business plan. The model is so successful because once you have a large captive audience, it creates many more opportunities to generate revenue like with membership dues every month or year, leads you sell to your members, affiliate links to other ecommerce products or services, banner ads you sell to publishers and members, sponsored social media posts, donations, and you can also connect a storefront to your online directory website with the new eDirectory Storefront MOD.
* What type of content will bring more visitors? There are always opportunities for content creation with a potential to bring a lot of visitors to your website. Find out who the other players in your industry are as far as direct and indirect competitors, complimentary service providers, industry publications, forums, portals, and even social media groups. Get inspired by what works well for others and even what may NOT work well for your brand or community (sometimes it makes things a lot easier to get started when you at least know what to focus on).
8. Include new features
Treat every new member and newsletter subscriber early on as GOLD! Ask them what they’d like to see available to them on your site as far as any new features or functionalities. Try to truly identify what your niche can be with this as well. You will learn this by making an effort to connect and ask questions. You may be surprised by what you learn and it could create new opportunities for your online directory website. As you start to grow the directory website builder in you, you might find it useful to add a Community Forum, or integrate with services like Infusionsoft or Salesforce, or perhaps connect an eDirectory storefront in the MOD Store. All these services can provide the perfect environment for grow your business.
These are a few tips to help you to create a directory website. Contact us if you have any question and we will make sure you have a dedicated account executive to answer all your important questions before getting started.
We recently released the eDirectory July Upgrade to the product to add new features, make some optimizations, and change the way a few things work, all for the better!
We added more widgets to the library to make sure clients have the site that works best for their specific online community with new options for personalization.
Here’s a rundown of the latest and greatest eDirectory has to offer in its newest release:
1. Header: 4 new header widgets, totaling 5 different header widgets available for all themes
Header with sticky menu
Header with contact phone
Header with social media links
Header with centralized logo
Available for all themes
2. Footer: 3 new footer widgets, totaling 5 different footer widgets
Footer with logo
Footer with newsletter widget
Footer with social media bar centralized
Available for all themes
3. Results: 2 new results list widgets, totaling 4 different results widgets
Results list with grid view with filters on the left
Results list with grid view with filters on the right
Available for all themes
4. New Events Calendar widget available for all themes 5. New Nearby results functionality 6. New console command to enable or disable the maintenance mode
Header Widgets
We made header widgets that were once exclusive to our Medical, Restaurant, and Wedding themes available to the default eDirectory theme so clients can take advantage of those features without having to utilize any one specific theme.
Footer Widgets
The footer has also received some TLC with some new display features with new personalization options with the logo centered, social media links, or a newsletter widget. Clients can now select the footer design that works best and toggle between them as needed.
Grid View
The latest results list now allows for a grid view, showing content in easy to scan “cards”. This widget also has variations to display the search filters on either the right or left side.
Events Calendar Widget
A new interactive events calendar widget has also been added to make it much easier for visitors to find events they interested in attending based on the monthly calendar view. A highly requested feature that we’re very happy to have released. Recurring events are an especially enhanced feature of this new widget to run events that keep visitors coming back to the site.
Nearby Results Functionality
We’re really excited about one key element of this new release, which is the nearby results functionality for an improved search experience for our online community users to better find what they are looking for. This updated functionality allows both local community site and international vendor directory owners to better tailor to what extent nearby results will be displayed. This feature can even be personalized for specific locations, so if you have certain metropolitan areas or small municipalities, you can edit the nearby search results radius for those geographies specifically, pretty cool!
New Maintenance Mode
The new maintenance mode functionality now makes it even easier to enable while simultaneously allowing the site to be locked publicly while the site owner can make edits to the site and see it all live while logged in. This makes setting up the site more intuitive for the site owner so they can see the changes they make live.
Take advantage of the eDirectory July Upgrade now!
If you’re looking to launch your online Enterprise with all the newest features available, feel free to pick the plan that works best for you and get started in just a few minutes. Have any questions or would like to get connected with your assigned account executive to make sure we’re the best solution for your project? We’d love to meet you, simply request an eDirectory demo here.
If you’re an active customer of eDirectory and would like to schedule your site for an upgrade, you can get started here by completing this short Upgrade Request form.
Thank you for being the best part of eDirectory and we look forward to growing with you!
Join eDirectory Groups in Facebook and LinkedIn and get connected to people like you!
The new eDirectory Groups of users is a proof that webinar events at eDirectory.com have been a relative success, both for eDirectory and it’s global community of directory software clients. As we got started we had a few interruptions with the new webinar software and getting familiar with how it all worked, yet we see the applications for our business and the benefits for our clients, so we will be moving forward with weekly webinars after a slight maintenance period to get the next series planned and executed. We have learned a great deal about what we can do to continue our mission of building the best directory software on the planet and we thank everyone for their participation thus far.
Of the many pieces of actionable intelligence one we were able to roll out fairly quickly was the launch of our private partner strategy groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. We’ve already seen some directory owners interacting with each other and can see the potential for this as we continue to grow our community. We are committed to making ourselves accessible to all of our clients worldwide, no matter where they are, and these private groups are an excellent example of our goals here at eDirectory.com. Clients today have a myriad of resources at eDirectory like a knowledge base we constantly update, chat support, customer success agents on call, our blog, webinars, a support ticket system, and now our new private groups on social media.
We hope to see both clients and those interested in launching an online directory website with eDirectory get all the information needed to have the best experience possible with our platform., and we are confident these new strategy groups will play a significant role in this goal. We will strive to take every piece of feedback we receive and based on it’s ability to be adopted throughout the platform, have it added to the MOD Store, and to or enact a fundamental change in the logic of the directory software system. Nothing is off the table!
There are some exciting new optimizations and functionalities coming up on the next development cycle of the eDirectory.com directory software solution and some of those even came from our recent community events! We believe this is only the beginning of bringing our powerful community participants closer together online to power more “meaningful communities” for all our members and users to be a part of, one site at a time!
We invite you to please join us in either our Facebook group found here or our LinkedIn group located here. Please feel free to get started with joining the groups, introducing yourself, inviting friends and family looking to launch for the $200 in Referral credits you’ll each receive, and getting ready to learn more and earn more with other online entrepreneurs and community leaders!
Please keep the great ideas coming and we look forward to seeing our online communities grow, the same as we hope to see those of our clients’ online communities growing as well. Thank you for being the best part of eDirectory.com and we look forward to seeing what you build with our powerful directory software, cheers!
So we’re almost half-way through 2017 here (already, sheesh!) and the time certainly has gone by quickly at eDirectory.com. Looking a few years back we pioneered “Webinar Wednesdays” and it was a huge success since it allowed us to LEARN more from our online directory website clients. This was what we believed to be the most important benefit of conducting online directory software tutorials LIVE, so we could see in real-time any issues our clients were having, or what directory features they were most excited about, or what the newest upgrades entailed for their specific online communities.
As many things go in business, you tend to lose sight of what is important when you are given exciting new ventures to embark on. We’ve been busy making foundational upgrades to the entire directory software system, operational enhancements to provide better quality customer service, and we’ve also added loads of new videos to make sure clients have a better experience with this powerful (although easy to use) directory website solution. So now that we’ve spent the last year making waves with our development team with the last 3 upgrades, we are READY to re-release our weekly webinar program to our international community.
We are more than thrilled to be hosting our weekly FREE webinars for active customers as well as those looking to launch with eDirectory and wanting to see how it all works before getting started. In doing so, we’ll be alternating topics each week until we find a few our community would like to have recurring, so we’re open to any and all feedback as we kick things off here.
We curated 4 topics to begin our NEW weekly webinar series, you can see those here below:
Introducing the New Page Editor
We’ll cover the widget-based front-end and how easy it is to bring your unique vision to life on your online directory website. Drag, drop, save, and share! Wednesday, May 24th 10am PDT – Pacific 1pm EDT – Eastern 6pm BST – Europe REGISTER HERE
The newest platform upgrade at eDirectory.com, and why clients LOVE it!
We’ll present all the powerful new features recently made available on the directory website platform and take questions from active customers and those looking to launch their online Enterprise with eDirectory. Wednesday, May 31st 10am PDT – Pacific 1pm EDT – Eastern 6pm BST – Europe REGISTER HERE
Question and Answer Community Forum (+ Product Updates)
We’ll start with some recent product updates and then open up the floor for a learning session by taking live inquiries. Wednesday, June 7th 10am PDT – Pacific 1pm EDT – Eastern 6pm BST – Europe REGISTER HERE
10 Tips to Creating Successful, Revenue-Generating Online Directories
We’ll cover tips and strategies to create the most opportunities for success with your online directory website. Wednesday, June 14th 10am PDT – Pacific 1pm EDT – Eastern 6pm BST – Europe REGISTER HERE
All of our community webinars are held on a first-come, first-served bases. Upon signing up, you’ll receive a calendar invitation and some reminders before the show begins.
If you have any recommendations about webinar topics, we’d love to hear from you. Would you like more information about our community webinars or private training sessions? If so, please send an email to marketing@ eDirectory.com.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to meet the team and see if eDirectory.com is the right choice for your online directory business! Register now for for your favorite topic(s) and be sure to stay in touch with eDirectory.com for company and product updates at FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, GOOGLE+, and YOUTUBE.
Hello, hello! We here with eDirectory.com, global leader in online directory software, are VERY proud to share with all of you the details in our newest release, version 11.2… SO, let’s get started!
For your convenience we organized the release details into 3 main categories with an example for each:
DESIGN: featuring the NEW widget-based Front-End Page Editor
SUPPORT: Latin America is now fully-supported here at eDirectory.com
FUNCTIONALITY: the NEW custom content editor and ElasticSearch
DESIGN
Without a doubt, the most powerful element of this upgrade is built around the new front-end page editor, with over 30 pages pre-defined for you to edit, as well as the ability to re-arrange the elements on page to your preference, edit features within those modules, over 100 widget-combinations to choose from, and even the option to add your own widgets…. hey, you can even build new new pages altogether with this widget-based system.. No need to know any coding, simply drag, drop, save, and enjoy! Making it even easier to have the site that works best for you and make any changes needed along the way.
We’ve also made enhancements to the default themes that each have unique layouts of their own. We refreshed the color palettes across the board to be more consistent, and updated the default logo and background image placements to make sure you have the site that best represents your brand online with more options to make changes on the fly. The default footer was also edited to better fit everything together for you. Now, let’s move on to the Support category of the recent upgrade.
SUPPORT
Although the eDirectory platform has been available for many years in 7 different languages, we are VERY happy to be rolling out the FULL support for our Latin American clients with our new website about the best online directory software in Spanish. Now our new and existing clients in Latin America have all the information they’ll need to make the best decision for their online directory technology partner, along with Pre-Sales and Support staff now fluent in Spanish, over 60 knowledge base articles, and a new Welcome Video series now in production. We can’t want to see what our clients in Latin America build with their new directory websites! Now let’s take a look at some new functionalities!
FUNCTIONALITY
Starting with our new custom content editor, you’ll be able to add custom content as needed, and in a variety of locations with the new widget-based system. Simply click to add a custom widget, add your content, and publish to live… all within your site manager and in 3 easy steps. The site manager can now also bulk insert categories to make organizing your members a breeze… simply open up the dialog box upon clicking on categories to get started adding not only your top-level categories, but your sub-level categories, all the way to 5 sub-levels of categories.
Members and users can search recurring events to find out what’s going on in their area or industry every Wednesday night for example… concerts, mixers, conferences, seminars, classes, you name it! The Classifieds engine also got upgraded so publishers of classifieds can now add a video and PDF file to their classified ads, whether those are classifieds for products, cars, properties, boats, businesses, and even personal ads. NEXT, the API for the integrated and proprietary mobile application is now running version 2 to support the recent enhancements, so be to sure to re-publish your app to get the latest and greatest! And Finally… ElasticSearch, used to power some of the most robust websites on the planet such as Facebook, Netflix, Etsy, Foursquare, and eDirectory.com was upgraded for better search relevancy and user experience.
What else is new?
In addition to all these amazing new features in design, support, and functionaltiy…. we’ve also made over 60 system improvements and optimizations to continue adding value to the eDirectory platform so that our clients have a system that stays parallel with industry advancements both now and in the future.
So, what can you expect next?
Well this upgrade is very important for us here at eDirectory.com and our clients since it has also laid the foundation for our future upgrades as we will be expanding upon the integrated mobile app frontier, pushing the limits on client-side custom content capabilities, and adding an entirely new module system that will make adding your favorite MODS a breeze… and any other valuable enhancements as recommended by you, our awesome global community.
Well this about wraps up our coverage of the March 2017 Version11.2 Upgrade. Read here the full list of enhancements of v11.2.
For active clients looking to take advantage of the latest and greatest eDirectory.com has to offer, simply fill out the Upgrade request form found here, contact your account executive, or create a new support ticket or start a chat on our website.
For new clients looking to launch their online Enterprise with all you see here and much much more, please fill out the request a demo form on our eDirectory.com so we can match you up with your assigned account executive, you can also call us directly at +1-800-630-4694, or send an email to Sales@eDirectory.com
We look forward to seeing what you build with eDirectory.com. Thank you and make it a great day!
eDirectory.com is thrilled to release the latest version of the mobile app builder. With a completely revamped design, powerful features, and a sleek interface – this new app release will add tremendous value to your online directory enterprise.
eDirectory.com Mobile App Builder: a brief overview of what’s new
Engage your app users with TRUE push notifications. eDirectory mobile app builder will now integrate with Google Firebase to offer an easy way to create, schedule and manage the use of push notifications. Send messages to all subscribers or segment your tailored messages to specific users to drive activity and retention. Increase your revenue potential by offering paid push notifications to your members for maximum exposure.
New beautifully-redesigned homescreen
New features include a beautifully-redesigned homescreen will now serve as the main app welcome screen. Publishers will be able to manage the module listings display and add some flare with slider images, optional summaries, and special links. These sliders create a great new opportunity to offer your members premium exposure on the homescreen for value-adding opportunities.
Expanded color palette
Another great new feature is the expanded color palette designed to better match your branding. Each module may also be color coded which will easily distinguish which section of the app you are using including listings, deals, events, articles or blog creating a more intuitive app navigation. Create some distinction among your features with brand-building color schemes.
Google Firebase Analytics
eDirectory has integrated with Google Firebase – a super-charged mobile platform which expands the usage and functionality. With Google Firebase Analytics – app publishers will now have the ability view app-specific analytics and to drill down on app usage for detailed behavioral reporting. Demographic segmentation, including age, gender, and location are available right out-of-the-box. With this powerful new integration, the foundation has also been set for continual optimization and new feature releases.
Search by voice
New expanded search capabilities include additional filters, search history as well as auto suggest. Search-by-voice is an awesome new feature which makes it incredibly easy and convenient for mobile users to search simply by speaking their request. All search functionality is now supported by Elasticsearch – a powerful program also used in eDirectory’s web based platform searches.
We’ve also added a ‘log in with Google’ feature which will make it so easy for Google users to sign in using their Google account credentials.
We are proud to announce all the hard work we’ve done to bring our valued customers the latest and greatest so they can continue to grow their online revenue goals! We look forward to seeing what you build with the newest version of the eDirectory.com Mobile App Builder.
Already a customer?
If you’re an existing eDirectory client, and would like to take advantage of what’s new, please contact your account executive for next steps or complete the Upgrade Request form found here. For clients running the latest version, the new App Builder is LIVE. Simply build, publish and submit to iOS and Android. We also can help submit.
New at eDirectory.com?
If you’d like to learn more about launching your online Enterprise with eDirectory.com, simply click now “Try Free Demo” or call 1-800-630-4694 and your assigned account executive will be more than happy to make sure we’re a good fit for your project.
More Income: offer multiple Ads and Classifieds to your listings
Increase your income by offering multiple banner advertisements or adding classified ads to your listing levels and plans creating high value plans for your members. This is a great way to upsell premium plans that includes these additional opportunities for members to maximize exposure and branding across your website. (now available in v 11.1)
Banner Ads
When getting started with a new website, publishers can use the banner ad space to place affiliate links, sell your own products/services or add google Adsense to generate revenue. Website publishers can also sell banner ads at 80% off to get started, upgrade members for free so they can add offers which will allow you to then charge them for leads. eDirectory has all the banner tools that you’ll need to turn a profit from your advertisers.
By allowing your best customers to take advantage of the opportunity to proudly fly their banner ad atop the category they best represent, adds credibility and brand exposure reserved for premium members. This will quickly prompt your member’s competitors to also want to gain access to premium real estate on your website and sign up for paid advertising.
Displayed banners ads can be created to link to outside URLs such as your member’s website or link to internal listings, deals, classifieds or events in the directory website. eDirectory’s built in banner ad manager makes it super easy to upload banner ad images, manage and track click-through traffic. Banners can be images, flash, or even script from a third-party banner system.
Classified Ads
Another awesome built-in tool is the Classified Ad module. This allows members to advertise jobs, show items for sale or customize the Classifieds Module to display whatever is best for your community and includes descriptions, photos, pricing and contact information. Whether it’s advertisements or sales, it’s a one-stop shop for getting your Classifieds on your directory. Let your site customers sell anything they wish in the an expertly categorized, well-organized, and beautifully presented Classifieds section
A link to the classified ad will also be displayed in the member’s listings, same goes for the classified listing linking back to the member’s.
By offering these additional ads it’s not only beneficial for your members, but also helps site publishers to further populate their website with quality content.
Creating The Plans
Offer at least three and up to four plans displaying tiered pricing plans that are easy to compare and the pricing page that is easy to understand. Create a perceived appearance that by upgrading to a premium plan that includes banner and classified ads, they are able to receive far more value for their advertising dollar.
Creating listings and levels is easy in the eDirectory site manager dashboard which allows up to 4 listing levels and will display what is included (and what is not) great for displaying that all important comparison chart.
Create packages and promo codes to further customize your plans and pricing with value-add incentives.
So get started adding multiple banner ad and classifieds with your listings and start and watch your website start to rapidly develop into a thriving community.
Stripe is one of the most powerful payment processors on the planet and was added as a payment gateway option for our global user base during the newest v11.1 release. What clients love about Stripe is that it processes payments in over 100 different currencies, allows our clients to manage all of their own finances within the site manager, and also provides for free trials… which are a great marketing tool for growing your online community.
Once you have set up your Stripe account in the eDirectory dashboard, you will be able to set up your free trial options in your levels and plans. Set number of days, weeks or months under free trial giving members enough time to use the system, and begin to reap the benefits of becoming a member of your community.
But I want to monetize my site. Why would I want to offer free trials?
By offering free trials – this helps to quickly populate your new directory website with member listings and content. A more populated website with quality content will help build credibility, add value and begin to drive traffic to your site. By populating your site with useful information and displaying an active, popular website, this will help to boost user engagement which naturally leads to paid membership subscriptions and website monetization opportunities.
Once your site becomes established, you can then begin to monetize (link to monetizing your website blog) your website and reap the sweet rewards of your investment and hard work.
The most important steps to achieving your online revenue goals all start with growing your online directory community. Seeing is believing! With free trials, members can see how it all works, how easy it will be to add great content and get new leads for business.
You can even offer special upgrade deals to convert them into paying customers. Once they see how you curate your brand, content, and marketing, they will be more so enticed to stick around and grow with you!
3 Benefits of offering Free Trial Sign Ups:
1. Start Free and Encourage Paid Upgrade at a Later Date
By offering a free trial, sign up new members or allow for on-site sign ups via eDirectory’s built in self-service sign up system. Once trial members are given the opportunity to ‘test out’ the functionality of your directory, view the site report activity and see the number of leads coming in or coupons being redeemed, it’s hard to argue the value of the listing and much easier to close the sale or even upsell to a larger plan.
2. Free Trials help to Populate Your Directory With Quality Listings
When new browsers visit your directory and place a search for data, they expect to find results. Having your free members create listings and contribute content will show that your directory is active and successful. This is also where the FOMO (fear of missing out) factor comes in to play. If a business owner sees their competitor listed on your directory, they too will want to be listed and become a member of your community to remain competitive.
3. Free Members Create Quality Content and Add Value to Your Website
You want your directory to have the inherent appearance of a healthy and thriving website community – a site that provides educational and helpful information. Each member of your community will have the opportunity to add this type of content via listings, articles, events and blog postings. This is not only helpful to visitors, but it’s also great for SEO.
So, if you are an existing client and would like the Stripe feature added to your site, simply request an upgrade here, contact your account executive, or chat with us anytime as www.eDirectory.com ! Thank you and happy hunting with free trials for your site!
Creates a dialogue – once the free trial has been created, it will create a dialogue between you and your members… you can reach out to collect any feedback or make them a special offer. Once the free trial is over, it also creates the same dialogue allowing directory owners to have a meaningful conversation or learn more about their customer needs.
If you’re an active client and would like Stripe added to your site, please click the upgrade request form link to get that started, contact your assigned account executive or create a support ticket. New clients may request a demo call or pick the plan that works best for you and then select LAUNCH right from the pricing page.
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