After starting a directory website, receiving the first few submitted listings is a pure joy. People posting their business listings on your website directly means that they like your website.
And especially when it is a paid listing!
Submitted listings not just help increase the useful content on your website, but are also indicate that your promotional strategies are working.
However, take your time to rejoice for the new ‘user submitted’ listings on your website – but then – it’s time you moderate them for your users.
When users submit their listings on your website, they might not follow all the norms or conventions you stick to, to maintain the consistency and the quality of content on your website.
And a quick check does no harm, does it?
So here are a few of the things that you should look into the user submitted listings on your directory website.
Title of the listing
Obviously the title matters a lot. A poorly written title – full of punctuation/grammatical errors, and failing to make the concept clear – is a total turnoff.
Since the title of the listing will appear at multiple places, and at some point – it will prove to be the entry point for your listing. Therefore, a precise title is the first thing you should take care of.
The title should be short, precise and clearly describe what the listing is about.
Example:
Good Title: Blue Dolphins, Water & Amusement Park
Bad Title: Blue Dolphin Park
Original Content
The content of your website, matters for obvious reasons. The description for the listing is your only way to communicate with the visitors and tell them all about the place/listing.
If you are looking at a submitted listing, there are a few things to check:
- The content is original and not copied
- There are no grammatical or spelling error
- The content is useful & adds meaning to the listing
The content in good form ensures that the visitors get a better idea of what you want to express. Good content makes your listing more useful.
Pictures to talk for you
Besides the textual content, there are images on the listing to help you convey your message about your business. With the listing
“Featured image” obviously is the main image, but the other images are also important. They let you give a visual experience to your visitors.
You should ensure that the images uploaded in the listing are high quality, and well optimized. You can use the image optimizer for WordPress to make sure that all the images uploaded to your website are automatically optimized.
The image should be original and not cause copy right infringement if downloaded from the internet.
Relevant and enough information
When using the directory WordPress themes, a listing generally consists of different information fields. You should ensure that all the important images, the business description, the contact image is properly used.
For a listing to be complete and useful, you can make sure that the description is precise, clear and easy to understand.
If it is a custom listing, like that of a car, a classified item, or a job listing, than you should make sure that all the important fields are populated with proper values.
Spell and Grammar check
You may not want to create a page on the internet with a lot of spelling errors. Spelling and grammatical errors may unnecessarily disappoint your visitors and make your content a bit difficult to process for the visitors.
However, there are a lot of tools that can help you ensure that your listing is grammatically sound. Such tools will automatically check for spellings and grammar in your copy and recommend the corrections.
Proper contact information
The part of the listing that contains the contact information, is one of the most important parts of your listings. Through the contact information like email address, phone number, etc. the interested visitors can instantly get in touch with you.
A listing with all the required information and proper contact details is all a visitor needs to know and subsequently reach out the business.
Check if added in the correct category
What helps keeping your directory website organized is proper categorization.
Especially because a directory website is a large and complex collection of data in the form of listings. So when these listings are properly organized, it easy to find them.
For example: A visitor interested in hospitals will not have to go through the listings concerning parks and restaurants in the city. He can straight away find the hospital listings by choosing the category.
So for a visitor on your directory website, the categories are a useful form of filters. While for you, as a directory owner, the categories are not just filters but also a great way of keeping things organized.
There can be more in the list
What you can add to make your directory website more efficient, is an open ended subject. There can be many small and big that contribute to a useful, effective directory website with best user experience.
However, the ones mentioned in this list are the basic ones.
The points mentioned here are some very small details that you might not pay attention to, but can make a lot of difference.