Building a Directory Website
Building a directory website is much harder than I thought it would be when I came up with the idea for a website for local vendors. When I decided I wanted to create Local Vendor Lookup, I thought I could just find a template and then it would all just sort of… fall into place. Clearly, I was not familiar with building a website! For purposes of brevity I’ll skip a lot of the steps and get right to the directory part — there were a ton of steps between coming up with the idea and starting to build the site, but I’ll get into those some other time. Building a directory website is what I want to talk about.
The first thing I had to do once I decided I was going to build the site myself was choose which directory plugin I wanted to use. There are a lot of them out there, and I did a lot of research. But I also knew that I could get paralyzed by indecision and then end up not building anything at all, and I wanted to avoid that. Ultimately I settled on Geodirectory. I like their interface, and I especially like their support team, which answers questions quickly and efficiently.
But that was just the start. I’ve always frequented farmers markets and other local markets, but now I talk with the vendors. I learn about them and what they do, and I get business cards. Then I add the vendors to the site. I have around 100 local vendors listed on the site now, most of whom I’ve added myself, pulling information from different sources. It’s time consuming work. And that’s before I even get to SEO, writing blog posts, creating social media posts, and all the other things that are important for a new website/business.
The hardest thing has been trying to get traction. Everyone thinks the thing they’re building is amazing and everyone is going to instantly see how incredible it is and come running, and I’m no exception. I’m also no exception in that, that didn’t happen. I’m working every day to get traction. Some days I get discouraged, other days I feel motivated… but no matter how I feel, I work on the site every day.
If anyone else is working on a directory website, particularly with Geodirectory, drop me a note! I’m happy to share my experiences so far.
