Hi guys, Could I ask for some friendly advice? What I'm trying to produce is a user friendly local business directory for UK companies. They are organised by county and categorically arranged from a cool map on my homepage. What I would like to know is, what would you expect to see on a site like this? Members will be able to rate and review their local businesses for others to read and make judgements about. Normal members can sign up for free and use the site while business members buy a yearly advert page they can customise... Any advice would be awesome, such as how to populate such a directory. Thanks RJP1
Cheers dnk, I was thinking offering free listings first to build it up... How many do you think is a good number to get to start charging? Also, would £9.99 be a fair price for a customisable business page...? Anyone got any other advice? Thanks again, RJP1
In the US, I would start with a phone directory and a lot of free time. I have seen these types of sites mentioned as being plausible but work and update intensive. Would have to list the majority of businesses in a few areas to get it started. And then get them to see they are getting attention to warrant paying for a yearly advert. If I was tackling the issue I would start by listing the companies in specific areas that I thought would be the most sought after or the most interesting and let the business add a simple entry to it themselves. Course if you did all the hard work to build a database of businesses in a specific region, you could leverage it (and probably sell it) for the mobile phone fascinated crowd. Either way, start small and spread it out over time. Best of luck to ya.
Thanks shallowink, some good advice there. I'm already seeing the scale of the task ahead and I'm tackling it bit by bit on my demo URL, it's coming along so far. It's going to be very community based and driven and the members will hopefully, suggest businesses to use the site (fingers crossed!) RJP1
Definately have two options. One free, one costs. The free one has limited details, the cost one perhaps makes you more visible, allows you better descriptions, maps, more contact details, store hours etc... The free one is there to start with, and considering 'content is king' it's worth your while. I'd also recommend in years to come picking perhaps 25% of all free listed businesses and offering them a customized version for 3-6months. Afterwards, revert it and ask whether they'd like to upgrade (perhaps with a 25-50% discount). As for the price, £9.99 seems a nice amount for a year.
I like what spark911 is saying. Would have to see how you plan to display the adverts to really get a good idea of what would work. Could even level the adverts just like ebay does with the auction ads (cost ya a buck for bold text ) and work its way up to a linked page on your site. If you could make it so they setup planned ads (each month a new ad/promotion) it would be worth that much and maybe a more for a year.
I hope you realize that this project of yours is going to take nearly a year to launch! It will require hoards of hard work
Thanks for the advice guys, just woke up to these post of yours. Very helpful. Here is an example of how a business listing page will look (let's hope this works!): Business name [New, Featured, etc, superscripts] Address Telephone Fax Email Website Visited [as in hits to their website] [Then here is an "actions" box, ajax driven for voting, adding to favourites, visiting the site, contacting the business etc] Then the main description with an image thumbnail floated left (multiple images go to a gallery page) Then a nice google map which automatically runs from the address they input and is geocoded (pretty cool actually!!) Reviews section where people add their reviews and vote (has all the normal features like user avatars, usefulness, business replies, and reporting) OK, it's hard to explain like this, maybe I'll PM you a sneaky demo link if you're actually interested! Thanks again guys... RJP1