We released the Instant Messaging Plugin that allows site owners and advertisers to use Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger directly on the website.
Instant messaging provides real-time communication between visitors and listing owners, allowing them to make immediate sales contacts.
Site owners will be able to add a messenger floating button to the site, choosing one from the three options allowed. The other messaging platforms can be displayed on the header, footer and Contact Us page as clickable elements.
For advertisers, the messaging apps clickable items will be displayed below the phone number on the listing detail page.
Contact us today, add this Plugin to your directory, and get connected with your audience!
Benefits of using IM in your directory site
These apps provide instant communication. In addition to text messages, users can exchange multimedia messages, such as photos, videos, documents, or sound.
Instant Messaging is applicable to both B2B and B2C businesses. It is important to choose the right platform and explore what it has to offer.
Compared to digital marketing and social media, mobile messaging has much more engagement and return on investment in marketing.
Instant Messaging apps around the world
Different applications are popular in different countries, and so your choice of apps must take this into consideration:
WhatsApp is a world leader and is used in 104 countries. It is popular in Brazil, Mexico, India, Russia and in many countries of Europe, Africa, America, and Asia.
For US markets, the most used applications are Messenger and WhatsApp.
Facebook Messenger is used in 64 countries, notably Australia, Canada, and the United States.
Telegram and other messaging applications that are very popular in China, Japan, and Iran.
In Europe, however, the leaders are WhatsApp and Messenger. Asia and specifically in China, most users use WhatsApp and Telegram. In Africa, most people communicate via Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
Be sure to keep track of client preferences and their needs, which can change over time. Instant Messaging is a great development, satisfying the demands for speed, practicality, and real connectedness.
The General Data Protection Act (GDPR) is considered to be the most significant piece of European data protection legislation to be introduced in the European Union (EU) in 20 years and will replace the 1995 Data Protection Directive. The GDPR enhances EU individuals’ privacy rights and places significantly enhanced obligations on organizations handling data.
The new regulation goes into effect on May 25, 2018.
The GDPR regulates the processing of a data subject’s personal data in the European Union including its collection, storage and transfer or use. The GDPR gives data subjects more rights and control over their data by regulating how you should handle and store any personal data they collect.
Every website that collects, stores and handle European citizen’s data will have to comply. But what does that mean?
Basically, you’ll have to update your privacy policy and place a cookie consent disclaimer in your website.
How to (re)write my Privacy Policy?
As every online directory is unique, there’s not a standard template to copy. Besides the information you already have there, the privacy notice should address the following to sufficiently inform the data subject:
Who is collecting the data?
What data is being collected?
What is the legal basis for processing the data?
Will the data be shared with any third parties?
How will the information be used?
How long will the data be stored for?
What rights does the data subject have?
How can the data subject raise a complaint?
The best tools we find to help our users are Terms Feed and Iubenda. The final text will depend on how many tools you have installed in your site like Google Analytics, CRMs, Facebook Pixels, Hotjar, LiveChat, etc.
Data Controller and Data Processor
One thing that you have to highlight in your new Privacy Policy is who handles data.
A Data Controller represents the entity that determines the purposes, conditions and means of the processing of personal data: the Directory owner (you)
If you host your online directory with us so we are the Data Processor. If you host anywhere else, your or the hosting provider is your Data Processor.
Be sure to use the right Data Processor when updating your Privacy Policy.
How to place a cookie consent disclaimer in my online directory?
One way is to use paid tools like OneTrust.com, Cookiebot.com and others. But there are open source options like Cookie Consent by Insites and Silktide. Just place their scripts using Google Tag Manager.
To learn how to install the Cookie Consent Disclaimer by Insites, read this article here.
Alternatively, you can embed one of the numerous 3rd party widgets, or if you have the owned license you can develop custom code.
*We take great care in providing information to you, but please be aware of the fact that this blog post can not be considered a substitute for professional legal advice.
What is the best business directory script to start a project?
When working on a new idea, it can be daunting to navigate the internet and find the best solution for your needs. Particularly when you enter WordPress territory, where there are so many plugins, and both free and paid themes to choose from, you are almost certain to waste time trying out options that are not professional.
Outside of that scenario, you will find other options that are not an all-in-one solution in terms of suiting any niche you may need. If you would like to build a new online business such as a restaurant guide or a fitness & wellness online directory, you could do both with a professional look with eDirectory.
Let’s show you what are the main strengths of eDirectory.
And what makes eDirectory the best business directory script?
In a few words, the complete package!
eDirectory is the most complete directory script out there, fully-featured from top to bottom, beautifully designed, and ready to generate a recurring revenue stream.
Built using technology platforms that power many of the largest sites on the internet. In addition to the core technology, we have optimized our code and configurations for speed and reliability.
The eDirectory setup is fast and easy. You can import listing data from a spreadsheet, and click to edit navigation and other site layout items via the widget-based page editor. Launch your site in minutes and manage your content with ease.
All versions come with the following modules: Listings, Deals, Classifieds, Articles, Events, Blog, and Banners. It also comes with a User Profile, Advertiser Dashboard, and 10+ Payment Gateways to make it easier to monetize your online directory.
And to complete that full package, you still get the only online directory app builder in the market with native support for iOS and Android. Know more about theintegrated app builder.
Built with SEO in mind, you can focus on content, and rest assured your site will rank well in the SERPs.
Perfect for beginners. Fantastic for experienced developers!
eDirectory has an intuitive interface to help our customers to create and manage their directory websites with ease, taking advantage of ourCloud subscriptions: don’t worry about installation and hosting, we’ve got you covered.
Skilled developers can self-host our directory script accessing the source code to perform any modification in design and features.
What you can build with eDirectory in just a few clicks:
Lead-gen directory websites
Buyer’s Guides
Local, National, and International Business Directories
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 Group on Facebook and get connected to people like you!
The new eDirectory Facebook Group of users is proof that webinar events at eDirectory.com have been a relative success, both for eDirectory and its 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 group on 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 its 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 our Facebook group found here. Please feel free to get started with joining the groups, introducing yourself, inviting friends and family to get 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
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
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
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
All of our community webinars are held on 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 your favorite topic(s) and be sure to stay in touch with eDirectory.com for company and product updates at FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, 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 functionality…. 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!
Since the release of eDirectory v11.1 our customers are able to select from 4 beautifully re-designed templates, one of them is the the Medical Directory Theme.
The Medical Directory Theme
The Medical Directory theme is designed to promote the health and wellness industries and features. This theme puts recent reviews front and center – an important feature when choosing a healthcare professional.
Of course you can use this theme for ANY business or industry and customize to meet your needs. All of the image sizes are consistent between themes so you may choose to switch themes at any time and will not lose the integrity or compromise the design of your directory website.
Interested on having this Medical Directory Theme? If you are new on eDirectory, signup today! Already a customer and ready for v11.1? Request your upgrade!
Since the release of eDirectory v11.1 our customers are able to select from 4 beautifully re designed templates, one of them is the the Wedding Directory Theme.
The Wedding Directory Theme
The Wedding Guide Theme easily allows site managers to build a beautiful wedding guide to promote wedding planners, venues, photographers, caterers and more. This layout minimizes the category links.
Of course you can use this theme for ANY business or industry and customize to meet your needs. All of the image sizes are consistent between themes so you may choose to switch themes at any time and will not lose the integrity or compromise the design of your directory website.
Interested on having this Wedding Directory Theme? If you are new on eDirectory, signup today! Already a customer and ready for v11.1? Request your upgrade!
Since the release of eDirectory v11.1 our customers are able to select from 4 beautifully re designed templates, one of them is the the Restaurant Directory Theme.
The Restaurant Directory Theme
The Restaurant or Dining Guide allows site managers to prominently display featured listings for optimal exposure.
Of course you can use this theme for ANY business or industry and customize to meet your needs. All of the image sizes are consistent between themes so you may choose to switch themes at any time and will not lose the integrity or compromise the design of your directory website.
Interested on having this Restaurant Directory Theme? If you are new on eDirectory, signup today! Already a customer and ready for v11.1? Request your upgrade!
Webinars
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