What would you like to see in a business directory?

[FarrisFahad]

Hello webmasters,

I am currently building a template that I am going to sell on different websites like Codester and CodeGrape.
I want to build a business directory.

Here is what I have come up with ...

1. users can register and add listings.
2. admin can create categories for users to select from.
3. admin can create sub categories if necessary.
4. users can submit a review for listings ranging from 1 to 5 stars with comments.
5. users can buy a featured listings for more traffic.
6. admin can set listings parameters like website url and email address or phone number.

What else should I include?
I am not sure if I am missing something important.
Any suggestions?

[Dani]

I hate to tell you this, but Google hates web directories and none rank anymore. Gone are the days of Yahoo!, Dmoz, etc. I don't want you to waste a lot of time because I personally don't feel you'll be able to sell a lot of these.

There are some paid models that still exist today, such as The Yellow Pages, Yelp, and Angi. I would browse sites like Yelp to get ideas for what they offer and are doing. Is your intention to sell it as a Yelp clone?

[antwanlee]

There are already about a trillion sites that do exactly that.

If you want that do make money from users, build a site that signs them up for all other business directories for a one time fee.

If you want to make money from marketing, you will have to get a high domain authority (DA) score for your site so that users are encouraged to sign up.. Which will take lots of time.

if you are coding this for fun and as an excercise, go for it of course. Maybe it will even work, you never know.

Marketing wise most companies go to social media now. Business directories are indeed mostly dead, as @dani already noted.