The worldwide figures for email users grew to 3.9 billion in 2019(*1). Furthermore, by the end of 2025, the number of worldwide email users will reach 4.6 billion. With so many users from across the globe, it can be concluded Email marketing will still be alive and it will continue to benefit digital marketers be it a blogging site or an eCommerce site.

Today, we will be discussing email marketing best practices for your directory business to grow your traffic and maximize your sales. Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Why Email Marketing Best Practices Matter to Your Directory Business

According to Campaign Monitor, the ROI for email marketing can be as high as 4400%. That’s $44 for every dollar spent on an email marketing campaign.

It should not be an exaggeration if we say email marketing best practices are in the heart of digital marketing. Because it brings results in the quickest time possible with the highest ROI.

Now, as we are writing email marketing best practices for directory website, you need to know the average open rate and click rate among different industries:

Feeling demoralized? Well, if you consider 16.65% open rate and 1.92% click rate, it may seem the lowest. But, the cost of sending emails to 10000 people is pretty low. And if nearly 5 people purchase your service, then it’s enough to make break-even. That’s how amazingly email marketing works.

So, what are the email marketing best practices for your directory business?

Now, if you want to take the growth of your directory business right through the ceiling, we encourage you to go through the following ideas:

1. Don’t purchase contact lists.
2. Sending emails at the right time
3. Creating a consistent email schedule
4. Steer clear of using ‘No-Reply’ in the sender’s email address.
5. Sticking to fewer than three typefaces.
6. Optimizing the email’s preview text.
7. Including an email signature.
8. Keeping the main message and call-to-action above the fold.
9. Personalizing the email greeting.
10. Keeping your email 500-650 pixels wide.
11. Putting your logo in the center or upper-lefthand side of the email.
12. Using incentives to increase open rates.
13. Using emojis to make your subject lines stand out
14. Using auto-responders for opt-ins.
15. Testing your Email campaign
16. Writing compelling (but concise) subject lines.
17. Avoiding JavaScript from the Codes
18. Leveraging the power of humor

1. Don’t purchase contact lists.

The reason this tip tops our list for email marketing best practices is that when you are purchasing emails it’s not going to resonate with your business tone. Sounds surprising, right?

That’s because you are highly likely to get an audience list that is completely from a different source. Meaning, you did not interact on behalf of your business with those clients whatsoever. Hence, your email may end up in the spam folder or they will simply mark your email as spam rather than buying something being convinced by your copy.

In addition, buying email lists and sending emails to them is not GDPR-friendly either. That means you must take consent before reaching out to your visitors especially if you are in the European Union. Thus, it is one of the best practices in email marketing you can follow.

2. Sending your emails at the right time

Among other email marketing best practices, sending emails to your audience at the right time can be a game-changer to get the best open rates. So, what’s the best time and day to send your emails to your audience to get the best email rates?

Well, if you search for the answer on Google, it will advise you to send your email on Tuesday at 10 am.

Then again, this idea is circulating the web for a couple of years and everyone is using the same advice from Google. And the result? Your email will get lost in the crowd.

So, as an email marketing best practice, what you can do is that you should be sending emails immediately before or after the peak hour. Try to send it either from 8 am to 9 am or 11 am to 12 pm. In addition, try to do an A/B test or split test to determine which time span works better for you.

And the same concept works for the day. Besides, what works for others may not work for you. So, the best solution is to try to send emails every working day and see which works better for you.

So far, at Directorist, we have got the highest open rates on Thursday at 9 am. However, Tuesday is still admittedly the second-highest at the moment for us.

3. Email Marketing Frequency Best Practices – Creating a consistent email schedule

Don’t get me wrong! Your audience will simply forget your brand if you don’t send emails on a regular basis.

So, wage your email campaigns 2-4 times a month if you want to abide by the best email marketing practices. However, don’t bombard your audience’s inbox more than once a week because it can irritate them.

And the results? Your audience may reward you with lots of unsubscriptions, throwing in the spam folder, or at least with a performance drop in the open rate.

4. Steer clear of using ‘No-Reply’ in the sender’s email address.

Many email marketers and companies in the US comply with CAN-SPAM, a longstanding piece of legislation. According to the CAN-SPAM guideline, you are not allowed to use “No-Reply” in your email address (For example, no-reply@yourcompany.com).

The use of the “No reply” phrase in your address or in your copy prevents the recipients to take further action like unsubscribing or interacting with the sender. This violates the protection of the CAN-SPAM law. Furthermore, people are less likely to read an email that has been sent via such an email address including the “No reply” phrase. Remember, people always love to interact more with emails having a human touch. So, you should steer clear of using ‘No-Reply’ as an email marketing best practice.

5. Stick to fewer than three typefaces.

A matured and expert email marketers do know using too many font styles or typefaces can actually distract the readers rather than poring over.

Simply put, you should not junk up your email copy using more than two typefaces or too many bold fonts, etc. to pass the email marketing best practices.

Try not to use more than three typefaces or fonts, italic, bold, or color in your text. Remember the less clutter you have in your email copy the more conversions you will get in return, especially for professional niches like EssayHub assignments help, where clarity is king.

6. Optimize the email’s preview text.

Optimizing your email’s preview text may actually save your email’s death sentence, i.e., not opening at all. Usually, before a user opens an email copy, the preview text of an email pulls in the first few words from the email body and places it next to the subject line.

So, check and double-check your email’s preview text to whether it brings any demotivating words from the email body to make sure you are following the email marketing best practices.

For example, if your email’s preview text pulls in texts like “Not displaying correctly?” then before opening the email the recipient might think that the email has already an error and skip the mail let alone open it.

7. Include an email signature.

As we already mentioned people always love to interact with humans. Even though you are sending automated emails on behalf of the entire marketing team, people will still tend to see an email copy containing the sender’s signature.

Thus consider adding a signature to your email copy to ensure email marketing best practices as people are much more inclined to get emails from human beings.

8. Keep the main message and call-to-action above the fold.

Keeping your main message and call-to-action above the fold increases the chance of success. That said, people are much more inclined to bounce from your copy without scrolling down to see your entire copy.

Therefore, it is recommended you place your CTA and main message above the fold as the email marketing best practices. Also, repeat your CTA at least three times and evenly throughout the email copy in different formats and in various places.

9. Personalize the email greeting.

When you are sending emails, you should send relevant emails to the relevant visitor group. For this reason, you have to segment your email group beforehand to ensure you are following along with the email marketing best practices.

Next up, send your personalized emails to the group. Personalized means, you should include the name of your recipient in the subject line of your email including addressing words like Dear [Name of the recipient] or Hi [Name of the recipient].

No matter how engagingly you write your email copy, you can not grab their attention unless you personalize your copy with specific names.

But that does not mean you have to personalize every email separately. With advanced email marketing tools, you can do that using automation. Consequently, every recipient will get personalized emails.

10. Keep your email 500-650 pixels wide.

Scrolling (particularly horizontal scrolling) hurts the readers physically. Surprised?

Well, if you get an email that asks you to scroll horizontally, won’t you get a little irritated?

Any email template wider than 650 pixels will ask your recipient to scroll horizontally. This problem deteriorates if the intended reader uses a mobile phone device.

So, you need to minimize the cumbersomeness of your email by optimizing its width to ensure email marketing best practices.

11. Email marketing subject line best practices – Put your logo in the center or upper-lefthand side of the email.

No matter what type of email you are crafting, putting your business logo in the copy builds trust and awareness of your brand.

The best practice for email marketing is to put your logo is on the upper left corner of the email copy above the content of your email. However, you can also keep the logo right on the upper center to meet design purposes.

12. Use incentives to increase open rates.

Believe it or not, if you offer lucrative discounts or any other benefits in the subject line, people are prone to open your email with more than 50%. It is one of the best practices in email marketing.

Here are three incentive-focused subject lines “First time shopping, we will cover the shipping “Last chance to redeem 25% discount code” or “Spend $500 or more to save $50”.

Then again, you should not bombard your clients’ inboxes with promotional copies. Rather you should send emails that link to your blog’s value-added content. Only then can you send promotional ones.

Makes sense, right?

13. Email marketing subject line best practices – Use emojis to make your subject lines stand out

A simple yet effective strategy to look your email stand out from others is to use emojis. As the influx of emails from different senders make the recipients’ inbox overflowed, you really need them(emojis) to stand apart.

We have seen 4% more success in the open rate with the same email in two sample groups. So, why not use them?

14. Use auto-responders for opt-ins.

Your subscribers will usually forget the fact they opted-in. Hence, you should reward them with an auto-responding email containing bonus material as a reminder.

The auto-responder email should be sent out to the subscribers within either 1 day or 5-day intervals after the subscriber registers.

15. Test your Email campaign

It may seem a cliche tip but trust me missing data broken links or wrong images have been a regular phenomenon for email marketers.

Thus it is always recommended you check your email preview with the solution you are using. The best practice is when you send a test mail to a small group of people within your company colleagues to ensure everything is working fine.

16. Writing compelling (but concise) subject lines.

Since a good subject line is the most important aspect while writing an email copy, you have to optimize it with the industry standard.

Usually, any subject line beyond 50 characters, will face cut off due to the limited viewport of the devices. So, you should keep your subject line between 30 to 50 characters(including spaces) limit.

17. Avoiding JavaScript from the Codes

Generally, email uses HTML for content structure and unlike webpages, most email applications will block JavaScript from your copy. Email applications block JavaScript codes for the sake of security concerns.

Thus, if you are to copy any HTML code and paste it in your copy, make sure to remove JavaScript. Typically, JavaScript is placed in between the <Script></Script> tags.

18. Leverage the power of humor

When you are using humor in your email copy, you are practically controlling the emotional state of your visitor’s mind.

This way, you can literally make him open the copy and prod him or her to take any action from the main body.

End Lines on Email Marketing Best Practices

Now, you may be wondering how to comply with these tips effortlessly? Not to worry! Because you are covered with a host of freemium email marketing tools already out there in the market.

Make sure to pick the right solution for your business. We recommend you start with the free ones, then go to the premium ones to get the best results.

We hope these email marketing best practices will help you get more open rates and more conversions. Mention not, we will be updating these best practices with time. So, you are requested to visit this page every now and then to stay ahead of the curve!

So, what are you waiting for? Email away!

Finally, if you liked our posts, don’t forget to subscribe to our blog so that we can notify you once any post is published. Directorist is now on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn! You can also join the Directorist Community for sharing your thoughts and experiences relating to the directory niche. Come and join us to see what we’re up to.

Well, no matter what business you start with your WordPress website, you must keep inbound marketing strategies on your book to drive leads and run circles around your competitors.

But how to generate more traffic from inbound marketing strategies for your WordPress directory website. If you are in a rush to find an answer to this query, this article is for you to get off the ground! Besides these effective inbound strategies will work for any website too.

But before we set off…

What Is Inbound Marketing?

In layman’s terms, Inbound marketing is an interactive way aimed at attracting visitors by creating valuable content to your website using channels like blogging, Search Engine Optimization AKA SEO, Social Media, Webinars, videos, eBooks, opt-in emails, SERP, and so on.

In Inbound marketing strategies, visitors can communicate or interact with the media we mentioned above.

As we’ve already said, an endless stream of visitors to your WordPress directory website is all you need to get the ball rolling if you are onto generating more revenue. The inbound marketing strategy provides you with just that but in a more efficient way.

Inbound marketing is rather “Magnetic” than being “Pushy” or “Interruptive”. It falls mostly under the Digital Marketing category and it helps to turn a customer into a loyal and repeating one. Cool, right?

Not to Confuse Inbound Marketing Strategies with Outbound Marketing Strategies

Outbound marketing is outrageously known as “interruption marketing” or “Push Marketing” for its ways of promotions.

If you have ever been into traditional marketing, you might have known that visiting door to door, telemarketing, sending cold emails and cold calls, TV commercials, radio ads,  print advertisements (newspaper ads, magazine ads, flyers, brochures, catalogs, etc.), and many more. These are all outbound marketing strategies.

Not to say, Inbound Marketing lets you bring visitors more effectively than Outbound marketing due to less cost. In other words, Inbound marketing brings more organic traffic who are highly likely to convert due to their relevancy and enthusiasm for your products.

Now that you know about what Inbound marketing and Outbound marketing are, let’s see their characteristics in a flash:

Inbound Marketing Strategies:

• An interactive medium of marketing with visitors.
• Fulfills customers’ needs
• Pulls mostly interested and relevant readers in
• Solves consumers’ needs
• Interactive with readers
• As helpful content is consumed, audience members become leads
• Due to value-adding content visitors turn into leads
• Where you see it: blogging, Search Engine Optimization AKA SEO, Social Media, Webinars, videos, eBooks, opt-in emails, SERP, etc.

Outbound Marketing Strategies:

• Pushes messaging at everyone that is the relevant and the irrelevant audience group altogether.
• Usually doesn’t provide value through contents
• Salesy pitch in copy
• Dissociated or one-way communication
• Disruptive approach
• Where you see it: TV ads, billboards, pop-up internet ads, telemarketing, magazines.

Here Are the Best Inbound Marketing Strategies for Your Business

Now that you know the difference between inbound marketing and outbound marketing, you may be wondering what the inbound marketing strategies are, right? Here, you will find a number of the most effective inbound marketing strategies at your fingertips. If you are on the quest to know how to do inbound marketing these strategies will address those questions as well:

1. Qualified content marketing
2. On-page SEO or Global Search Engine Optimization
3. Off-Page SEO – Social media marketing
4. Optimizing for local SEO
5. Video Marketing
6. Optimizing for voice search
7. Reviving dead content / Updating old content
8. Personalized marketing

Qualified content marketing

It will not be an exaggeration if we address the idea of blogging to be the pillar of overall inbound marketing strategies. Be it a travel destination directory or local business directory or event directory or restaurant directory, it works as though it were the backbone for any business directory website.

That’s because it has the potential to pull the most relevant and organic traffic from the SERPs provided that you are writing something valuable to solve your customer’s needs and queries.

Under the hood, your leads will search with a specific keyword in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. and if they find your blog on the first page of the SERPs, you have a high chance they will visit your site and travel through your sales funnel to become paying customers.

Besides, with high traffic, your site will enjoy high domain authority and the search engines will give your blog the prerogative to get ranked faster.

However, your blog will only work well only if you craft content that really helps people. In other words, the copy you are making must provide value to the visitors to make it work. But what is the ideal length of content?

The majority of SEO experts think that should fall within the 1,000-1,500-word range:

An important point to note here is that you can not become salesy while writing a blog post. For example, you can only invite your reader to give a shot to the demo of your solution but can not shamelessly prod the reader to buy your product.

On-page SEO or global search engine optimization

Not surprisingly, without much organic traffic, you will find your opportunities to sell your product extremely limited. You can consider it the pillar of all your inbound marketing strategies.

That being said, Search Engine Optimization comes to the spot to save your day. Yes, if you can ensure proper on-page and off-page optimization, you will get an endless influx of traffic to your unique blog and unique product.

Now, you may wonder whether SEO is dead and is not that effective these days. But actually is not!

For your WordPress directory website, make sure you have your on-page SEO in order first. Here are a few items you need to focus on for on-page SEO:

• A low competitive focus keyword with a good number of search volumes.
• URL containing the focused keyword.
• Use of LSI (Latent Semantics Keyword) or simply synonymous or relevant keywords.
• Use your focus keyword in the SEO title and other headings.
• Use the focus keyword in content in coalition with other relevant keywords.
• Use necessary multimedia within your content.
• Provide a number of internal links accompanied by external links.
• Use no-follow links for your competitors.
• Make sure your page is mobile responsive and loads quickly.
• Create a meta description.
• Minimize your images and use alt text for them.
• Make sure you check your content with an AI detector tool to verify its originality and ensure it aligns with human writing standards.
• Check plagiarism and grammar before you publish your content.

Off-page SEO on social media

Now, more often than not people are seen attached to their mobile phones everywhere. Not to say, most if not all are sort of addicted to social media.

So, why not grab this opportunity to boost your website exposure?

Well, off-page SEO in various related social media where your target audience is roaming around is the key to getting more relevant traffic to your website.

Having said that, if you think social media are just the place to share your content, you are wrong. That’s because they are more than just social media. In social media, you can not only share your content but also interact with your audience easily by exchanging thoughts or reacting to others’ opinions.

However, you should not select all the social media under the sun and focus on all of them to share your content. The key here is that select only the social media where your leads are present rather than choosing the ones where there is no visitor present.

Common great social media places for a Directory Business website are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Linked In, etc. If done properly, you can engage with your audience, build brand awareness and drive more visitors to your website.

Optimizing for local SEO

If you search with the keyword “Best Restaurants” from California, all the visible restaurants will be from California, obviously not any restaurant from London. This is the power of local SEO and this is exactly what a directory site should provide to its customers.

If your restaurant shows up on your local visitors’ mobile they are more likely to convert. Here are few facts to consider:

A good WordPress directory business integrates this system as an inbound marketing strategy so as to attract more traffic to its business owners.

Video marketing

In an effort to bring more traffic to your website, the contribution of video content can’t be ignored. Gone are the days when people only read articles.

Here are a few eye-opening facts to look at:

• 75 million people in the U.S. watch online videos every day.
• Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
• 76% of marketing professionals plan to use video to increase their brand awareness.

Needless to say how important to incorporate video marketing in your inbound marketing strategies. With the rise of digital content consumption, videos have become a powerful tool for engaging audiences and conveying messages effectively. Whether it’s explainer videos, product demos, or testimonials, videos can help you connect with your target audience on a deeper level. To create compelling videos for your marketing campaigns, consider using a reliable video maker tool. This can streamline the video creation process and ensure that your content is of high quality and resonates with your audience.

In this case, the most effective medium for sharing your videos is YouTube. Another interesting point is that YouTube is the second-largest search engine:

YouTube processes more than 3 billion search results a month

Cacpro.com

Therefore, integrating keyword research and video optimization for YouTube is essential. This way, you can attract more organic visitors to your site.

You can make appropriate videos for your WordPress directory website. Here are a few examples:

• Automobile Directory: If your directory site is on listing automobile businesses. You can unbiasedly review cars and upload them on YouTube as well as on your website.
• Jobs directory: As employers and job seekers list their needs, you can create a series of videos that shows people how to create more effective video resumes to land their dream job by overcoming all the odds. You can even offer a “Done-for-you video resume service” for job seekers telling them, “Send us your details, and we will make your resume to get aboard your dream job.”.
• Vacation Rental Directory: For such a website, you have to create cinematography for beautiful local attractions, resorts, hotels, and B&Bs and post the video on YouTube and on your website.
• Local business directory: Create interview videos with the most successful entrepreneurs in your area and post and share the videos on YouTube, Facebook, and your website as well.

Optimizing for voice search

Now, more than ever, people are towards voice search rather than typing with their hands. With the advent of Google voice search, smart speakers, and other voice search-enabled devices, voice search has just burst into popularity.

This is why you need to optimize your content for voice searches too. But how can you optimize your content for voice searches?

While there is no 100% working and perfect answer to this question, we have tried to build the following approaches:

• The usage of long-tail keywords: People don’t have to type and thus they are more likely to talk more to get the most relevant answer to their search queries. Hence using long-tail keywords is overwhelmingly effective for voice searches.

• Focus on answering questions: With voice searches, people are going to ask a lot of questions. So, always, try to give answers to questions on your content. It means you will have to write the question together with the answers. This is dramatically effective to get your content pulled by the voice bot.
• Consider the questions people are more likely to ask: People will ask a plethora of questions using the ‘WH’ questions or What, Who, Why, How, Where. So, you will have to consider adding them to your text and answer them accordingly. This will help you get ranked higher in the voice search.
• Develop content with an informal tone: Google’s voice search algorithm is based on natural and informal day-to-day conversations. So, chances are very high that your content will be picked if you develop your content with informal and day-to-day easy English.
• Try out voice search: If you want to show your content on voice search results, try with a keyword and listen to the narrated text. Observe how the text is being written and then optimize your content accordingly.

Personalized marketing

It creates a sense of trustworthiness in their mind thinking that you take care of them.

Then again, if you do not know your visitors well, you can not give them what they want. If you study your visitors and segment them into groups, you can provide them with tailored needs.

For example, when you are sending emails, keep in mind the recipients’ age, sex, religion, etc., and also address them with their first name so that you sound more friendly to them.

Bonus: Reviving or Updating Old Content

Be it Google or Bing, every search engine likes to have unique and fresh content. If the search engines crawl and find out content to be stale like containing very old statistics, old data, and any inconsistency, then they will consider your content irrelevant and thus penalize it by not showing them on the first page of SERPs.

Hence, you always need to relaunch old and outdated content with the latest statistics and data.

Best Inbound Marketing Tools to Attract New Customers

Inbound marketing is a strategy that aims to attract potential customers by providing them with valuable content and experiences that align with their interests and needs. Here are some tools that can help you attract new customers using inbound marketing.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive inbound marketing platform that offers a suite of tools, including blogging, SEO, social media, email marketing, and analytics. It provides all the tools you need to create and manage effective inbound marketing campaigns.

For organizations that need to integrate their marketing data with broader business intelligence systems, solutions that connect HubSpot to SQL Server can streamline data synchronization, making it easier to run advanced reports and gain deeper insights across platfoms.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule and publish content across multiple social media channels. It also offers analytics and reporting features that can help you measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.

Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool that enables you to create visually appealing content, such as social media posts, infographics, and ebooks. It has a wide range of templates and design elements that you can customize to match your brand.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that helps you track website traffic and user behavior. It can provide valuable insights into how your website is performing, which pages are most popular, and where your traffic is coming from.

SEMrush

SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that can help you improve your website’s search engine rankings. It provides keyword research, competitor analysis, and backlink tracking features that can help you identify opportunities to improve your website’s visibility in search engines.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that allows you to create and send newsletters, automated emails, and other types of email campaigns. It also offers segmentation and personalization features that can help you target your messages to specific audiences.

Leadpages

Leadpages is a landing page builder that can help you create high-converting landing pages for your inbound marketing campaigns. It offers a range of templates and customization options, as well as A/B testing features that can help you optimize your pages for maximum conversions.

Takeaways

While there are no hard and fast rules to follow, we have touched on 8 inbound marketing strategies you can apply to your directory websites.

Not every strategy will equally work for your directory website. So, you have to check them one by one and determine which one works better than the others. This way, you will have to prioritize your strategy and get the best results.

Then again, we will suggest not mastering all strategies at once especially if you have limited resources.

We hope these strategies will help you do better inbound marketing and turn your visitors into repeatedly visiting leads and eventually into paying customers.

Finally, if you struggle to implement any of these strategies, don’t hesitate to share with us by popping your thoughts below. We would love to help you with our level best.

Some themes are too plain. Others are slow or missing things like maps, booking, or search filters. You end up wasting time trying to fix problems instead of building your site.

Good news—there are better options. We’ve picked the best restaurant directory WordPress themes that are easy to set up, look great, and come with everything you need.

So, without further ado, let’s dig deeper.

5 Best Restaurant Directory WordPress Themes

We have picked these themes not only for their great appearances but also for their full-fledged functionalities:

dRestaurant

dRestaurant is another great WordPress-based directory theme that is specifically designed to give your website the perfect vibe of the food & beverage niche. It comes with core features like multi-directory, drag, and drop-based directory page builders with custom fields.

The best part is that you can use 34 free Directorist Gutenberg blocks or Directorist Elementor widgets to create your restaurant directory within just a few minutes. The theme also has a paid extension including 17 components for Oxygen page builders.

The theme has integrations with popular platforms like BuddyBoss, Contact Form 7, MailChimp (email marketing solution), Google reCaptcha (Spam protector), WooCommerce, WPML integration, Yoast SEO integration, blog options, and many more.

Most importantly, it has a booking and reservation extension which will help your visitors to reserve their space in your restaurant. The theme has built-in SEO support for Yoast and it provides two separate dashboards for you and your other users. It is WPML ready and supports RTL (right to left) languages.

You can create WooCommerce based subscription plans along with regular pricing plans of the theme. It has payment integrations with popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and an offline bank transfer method which comes free of cost. Some premium features include: Listing Sliders, Comparing Listings, Booking & Appointment feature, Business hours, Live Chat, etc. Its premium features to make money includes claim listings, rank featured listings, subscription plans, paid ad placement, selling premium listings, and many more.

Last but not least the theme is scalable with a Flutter-powered native mobile app to attract more than 7.4 billion mobile users from around the world. It’s one of the best restaurant themes in WordPress directory niche.

Related article: How to Monetize a Directory Listing Website

FoodBakery

FoodBakery is a near-perfect restaurant directory theme to create any type of restaurant listings that provides membership options and the listing owners can manage their listings from their own dashboard. Even the general users will enjoy a separate dashboard too. The theme has a booking option and integrations with popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Skrill, Authorize.net.

If you are more into email marketing this theme has got you covered with the MailChimp integration. Other notable integrations include WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, WPML integration, and the support for Google Fonts.

Using this theme, you can allow your users to directly sign up with their Facebook or Twitter account. This way you can eliminate the need for a complicated sign up process. You can also use the drag and drop-based menu builder for your directory website.

Golo

Golo is a powerful directory theme that not only suits a restaurant directory but can also align with different type of niches. It has a very good UI or UX design with a fleet of features. Golo has a dedicated flutter based mobile app just like dRestaurant.

This theme completely supports Elementor page builder for drag and drop-based website building. It comes with core features like Booking form, Send message, See Location & Contact, different map API support, social login, review management, one-click import, claim listing, child theme ready, SEO ready, advanced search form with filters, custom fields, a dedicated frontend dashboard for users and listing authors or owners.

It has integrations with popular WordPress plugins – They are: Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, MailChimp, Loco Translation, and Checkout Field Editor.

Rentme

With Rentme, you can create any kind of restaurant classfied listing website with drag and drop-based website builder support via King Composer. It supports multiple languages with the RTL option. The theme is super customizable to meet your needs and demands. It combines the power of Kind Composer, One Click Installation, WooCommerce Bulk Discount, WooCommerce Product Filter, Revolution Slider, Monster Widget, WP User Avatar, Snazzy Maps.

The theme has 4+ homepage layouts which will be effective enough to make your restaurant directory more appealing to your visitors. It is also compatible with plugins like Opal Listing and Opal Membership. The theme comes with a mega menu and parallax effect. However, the theme does not have any mobile version but it’s compatible with mobile devices.

Foodota

Foodota is a very strong contender when you want to create a restaurant listings with features like food ordering, delivery, and multivendor. Its design is responsive and SEO friendly. The theme has integrations with popular plugins like Contact Form 7, WCFM Marketplace, MailChimp, and Elementor.

The theme supports Google fonts and has a one-click demo import feature to create your directory at a fast pace. However, apart from the multi-level menu feature, it has a few cool features like scroll animations, image zoom animations, color customizer, Sidebar position or fullwidth layout on any page or post, and much more.

Bonus: Foogra (HTML 5 Template)

If you want to develop your own restaurant directory theme, then Golo is the template you can go for. When you talk about the combination of a moderately good amount of features and page speed, it comes to the spot immediately. It is aimed at making any kind of restaurant directory using different templates. It also comes with a variation that has “Delivery” and “Take away” options. The template includes two sliders – One is the Revolution slider, and the other one is the Owl Slider. It also allows you to use the Parallax effect for your directory pages.

It also includes a separate frontend dashboard for your users. It is an SEO-optimized theme having the lazy load images option. It has several integrations with Google services such as Google Map API integration, Google Fonts, etc. It also has OpenStreet map integrations too. Finally, the template supports RTL languages as well.

We have checked their current customer satisfaction is 5 out of 5 which means you won’t regret it if you choose Foogra to create your own restaurant directory website.

In the End

For the most part, an advanced general directory theme is just enough to create any type of restaurant listing directory or a food business directory. But to add extra sausage with appearance and adding features like Booking and Reservation, we suggest you go for the above themes. If you have already been using these themes, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comment section.

It gives the searcher all information including maps, direction, food items, ratings, reviews, booking and reservation, and what not! You can let your users get this type of information with ease by simply creating a restaurant directory website.

In this tutorial, we will not only show you a code less way to create a restaurant directory website but also display the tricks to monetize your website with WordPress.

Basic (or Core) Features to Create a Restaurant Directory Website?

When we talk about the basic features of a restaurant directory we mainly discuss only the bare minimums:

• Directions: A good restaurant listing website helps visitors find their desired restaurant with maps, addresses, phone numbers etc.
• Location based Search: Location-based search helps visitors find their desired restaurants that they can
• Ratings & Reviews: The visitors can rate the restaurants and submit reviews that other users or visitors can see later.

• Front-end Submission: If you want to create a dynamic restaurant directory, you must enable your users to submit from the frontend. This way, you can remove the necessity to let them log in to the backend of your website.
• Advanced Search Form: It’s an important feature for your users so that they can run custom search based on different criteria like Category, tags, location, area, condition, transmission, fuel type, number of Cylinders and many more.

• Featured Listing: Featured listing is needed when you want to push a particular item to the top of all other items.
• Payment Reception: A good restaurant directory solution comes with online and offline payment system.
• Page builder support: The support for page builders like Elementor, Oxygen Page Builder, and Gutenberg block editor will allow you to design your website exactly the way you want.
• Export import option: With this option, you can effortlessly switch from one solution to another.
• Multidirectory feature: You extend your business with multi directory feature.

Other important yet basic aspects include:

• Scalability: A good restaurant directory solution is always scalable with extensions.
• Security: It must come with a good degree of security protection enough to protect your directory website from hackers.
• Support: Whichever tool you choose, make sure to pick a directory tool that provides the necessary support in case you face any issues.
• Integration: A good directory solution has integrations with popular platforms like MailChimp, BuddyBoss, BuddyPress, Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, WooCommerce, and many more.
• Mobile apps: With mobile apps, you can reach out to more than 7.26 billion users from around the world. Make sure the directory tool you choose has a mobile app available for Android and iOS.

Create a Restaurant Directory Following These 5 Easy Steps

Before we move any further, make sure you have a WordPress website up and running. If not, follow our step-by-step guide and try to follow these steps:

Step 1: Install & activate Directorist

Directorist is one of the best directory website builders that allows you to create any kind of listing website with full control. It has a very good customer rating of 4.7 (out of 5) with more than 20K+ users from across the globe. So, rest assured of its quality.

To download Directorist, navigate to the WP Admin Dashboard > Plugins > Add New > Search for the keyword ‘directorist’ > Install the following plugin as indicated with an arrow.

Next up, you need to activate and configure the setup wizard to get the ball rolling. We recommend you to visit our official documentation that will help you to do so

Step 2: Download & install a Restaurant directory theme

Directorist supports any WordPress compatible theme. But we recommend you pick a theme that was specifically designed for restaurant directory. We will be using the dRestaurant theme for this tutorial. If you have tight budget, you can use OneListing theme but you’ll missed the premium features and will require more customization tasks. For a free directory setup, you can follow this guide – How to Create a Directory Website in WordPress for Free

Once you download the theme, navigate to the WP Admin Dashboard > Appearance > Themes > Add New.

Then click on Upload Theme > Choose File and select the ‘onelisting.zip’ > Install Now.

Now, activate the theme to take an effect:

After activating the theme, you will see a notice to install a few plugins: : Elementor, FormGent, Listings with Map, Business Hours, Social Login, Pricing Plans, Booking, PayPal Payment Gateway, Stripe Payment Gateway, Claim Listing, Listings FAQs

Make sure you have download from Directorist user dashboard and installed them for the theme to work properly. You can just hit the ” Begin Installing Plugins” option to make them installed with just a click. Finally activate all of them.

And that’s it!

Step 3: Create categories & tags for your website

Upon installing the theme, you need to create a few categories & tags for your website to make your website more user-friendly and easily accessible. Without categories, it will be really time-consuming for the visitors to find their desired listing.

To add categories in Directorist, you need to go to the Directorist > Categories > Fill out the fields and make sure to hit the “Add New Category” button.

Similarly, you can add tags so that the visitors can find their desired item as fast as possible. You can do it from Directorist > Tags > Enter Credentials > Add New Tag.

Step 4: How to add new locations

Adding locations is an important factor for your website so that users can get more relevant restaurants while they search for a listing. To add locations, you have to go to the Directorist > Locations > Enter credentials > Add New Locations.

Step 5: Listing Submission by Users

Now that you set up all the basic stuff, it’s time to add some listings. You can use import listings through CSV, or add manually or using a add listing form. You can learn in detail from our Ultimate Guide on how to create a directory website. Let’s add a listing from the front as if we are like a visitor. Create a submission form: Directorist > Directory Builder > Add Listing Form

To upload a restaurant listing, navigate to the front and you will get a submission form. Fill out and submit. That’s it!

After you have a series of listings on your restaurant listing website, the all listings page will look something like this:

So, you are already done with creating a basic restaurant directory website. Now, let’s add some advanced features so that you can start earning from your website.

Adding Advanced feature: Monetizing your restaurant directory website

Here comes the optional yet most important part, we know. With Directorist, you can monetize your website in a number of ways. Here are a few notable ways:

• Charge for listings
• Featured listings
• Bookings & appointment
• Sell premium listings
• Allow businesses to claim listings
• Charge for viewing private listings
• Allow private/sponsored advertising
• Charge for membership
• Sell business leads
• Promote affiliate products
• Allow sponsored articles/guest posting
• Access control
• Ranked featured lists
• Paid ad placement

Want to learn these ways in detail? Give a read to this article, “How to Monetize a Directory Listing Website” now!

Bonus Tips

• Free Elementor Support: You can add the filtered Search Bar from the Directorist Elementor widgets. If you are using the OneListing theme follow this short video to insert the search bar directly from the “Theme Elements” section:

You can also style or customize the search bar from the Elementor editor panel like any other widget.

Just like the Theme Elements, you can effortlessly edit the Directorist Elementor widgets too.

• Free Gutenberg Support: You can also create your restaurant directory website pages using Gutenberg blocks. You will just need to click a Directorist Gutenberg block to generate pages in the blink of an eye just like the Elementor widgets. For example, here we have created the all listings page using the Directorist Gutenberg blocks:

Close-down

And that’s that! Creating a restaurant directory is full of fun and excitement. We have tried to show you only the bare minimum. You will get much more functionalities in the tool. If you are stuck with something, visit the official documentation immediately. Still, stuck? Then don’t hesitate to share your problem in the comment section below. If you are already using Directorist for your restaurant directory, feel free to share your experience below.

Finally, before you start downloading Directorist we recommend you use the demo version to get a quick hands-on experience.

Without the perfect theme, your site may suffer from slow loading, poor search functionality, and limited customization, leading to frustrated users and lost opportunities. Plus, a lack of mobile responsiveness can hinder your website’s performance on different devices.

The best WordPress themes for place listing directories combine sleek design with powerful features like responsive layouts, advanced search, and booking integration. These themes offer everything you need to create a user-friendly, functional, and attractive directory website.

5 Best WordPress Themes for Place Listing Directory

Before we find out the best place listing themes, let’s take a look at some prominent features of the WordPress travel location themes:

• A travel directory theme should have a native mobile app (to attract more than 7.4 billion smartphone users from across the globe).
• A listing place theme must have a drag-&-drop-based builder including custom fields
• It should support page builders such as Gutenberg Block Editor, Elementor, Oxygen Page Builder, Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, Divi Builder, WP Bakery Builder, Brizy Builder, etc. A good Directory theme is compatible with at least one of these page builders.
• Must be 100% mobile responsive
• One-click-demo import
• CSV export-import
• Right-to-left language support
• WPML (WordPress multi-lingual support)
• Scalable with extensions
• Multi-directory niche support (For example, you can run a doctor directory and an automotive directory simultaneously without changing your root domain)
• Monetization with featured listing
• Ability to charge for every listing
• Receive payments through offline bank transfer
• Google maps integration
• OpenStreet maps integration
• Free support via WordPress.org
• Approve / unapprove listing submissions
• Listing video submission option
• Terms of services option
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) option

Now that you know all the basic features of a place listing directory theme, let’s dive into the best travel listing themes:

dPlace

dPlace tops the list as it comes with all the bells and whistles that you can imagine in a great travel listing theme. It is 100% mobile responsive and comes with core features such as support for popular page builders like Elementor, Oxygen Builder, and Gutenberg page builder. Currently, it has 17 Elementor widgets, 17 Oxygen page builder components, and 16 Gutenberg blocks, charge for listings, featured listings, receive payments through bank accounts.

The theme is customizable with widgets and a drag-and-drop directory page builder with unlimited custom fields. Other core features include Tax & GDPR readiness, list/grid view, CSV export-import, email notifications, single-click-demo importer, Google Maps, OpenStreet Maps, Contact Form 7, R-T-L (right to left language support), WPML support, Yoast SEO integration, blog options, place video (via YouTube, Vimeo, etc.), separate frontend dashboards for users and so on.

The best part is that it has some exclusive and premium features like Listing Sliders, Claim Listing, Comparing Listings, Booking & Appointment features, Business Hours, Oxygen builder support, Live Chat, etc. With the theme, you can monetize your directory website by charging listings, creating Subscription-based pricing plans, showing Affiliated ads manager for passive income, etc.

dPlace has integrations with popular payment gateway platforms such as Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, etc. Thus receiving payments will be much more convenient both for you and your customers. The theme also integrates with MailChimp to streamline your email campaigns. Not to mention, its BuddyBoss and BuddyPress integrations will allow you to create a directory having social media features that is much more interactive.

If you want to create your place listing directory website with a travel directory theme, then it is the perfect one to start with.

PointFinder | Directory & Listing WordPress Theme

PointFinder is another flexible directory theme that requires no prior coding knowledge to set it up and to create a sleek and intuitive listing place directory website. The theme is packed with huge functionalities that can be used to create wonderful place listing directories.

Its prominent features include single-click-import, translation & partially RTL ready, a drag-&-drop system with Visual Composer page builder support, unlimited custom fields, advanced search functionality, Revolution Slider, add to favorite, Google Maps integration, and so forth. 

Other cool features include reviewing a listing, social login, Google reCAPTCHA, email templating system, and social sharing buttons, with lots of design options and widgets. 

The theme has integrations with WPML, bbPress, Stripe payment gateway, and PayPal payment gateway. Its unique feature is that it supports multiple points on the map with Point Finder Ajax Infrastructure. PointFinder ships with a child theme that can be easily edited and saved for future use.

OneListing Pro

OneListing Pro is a multipurpose WordPress directory theme that can be used to create any kind of listing website. If you want to create a 100% place listing website, you can pick it up.

This theme includes a customizable drag-and-drop-based form builder having unlimited custom fields. You can use the demo importer which has a blogging section and various layouts. Some of the notable features include page builder support (Elementor, Gutenberg, Oxygen), monetization with charging for listings, featured listings, rank featured listings, claim listings, subscription plans, WooCommerce subscription plans, and ad placing.

You will be able to collect payments through popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and even with offline bank transfer methods. The theme has a live chat option in which you can allow your visitors to talk with the listing owners. Another important option is the Booking and Appointment feature that allows the listing owners to receive orders directly from the visitors.

The theme has integration with Yoast, Google Maps, OpenStreet Maps, Contact Form 7, WPML plugin, etc. You can even add features like comparing listings so that the visitors can compare places before they book them. The theme is scalable with a native mobile app that helps you turn your place listing website into a flutter-based mobile app that is available both for Android and iOS.

Other features include CSV export-import, list/grid view, business hours, R-TL support, email notifications, BuddyBoss integration, BuddyPress integration, Social login, MailChimp integration, GDPR friendly, Tax ready and so many more.

Golo – Directory & Listing, Travel WordPress Theme

Golo is mainly a multipurpose directory theme that you can use to create a listing-place website with great control. Its UI & UX design is pretty snappy with 100% mobile responsive layouts. You can start making money by placing affiliate ads on your tourism directory website, selling memberships to vendors, or listing owners for submitting their places.

It has a drag-and-drop page builder with unlimited custom fields that support the Elementor page builder. It also has a child theme to apply any custom code so that the parent theme is not affected by it. On top of that, it comes with more than 200 flexible theme options that will enable you to edit the theme the way you want.

The theme has core features like a Booking form, Send Message, See location & contact, OpenStreet maps, Mapbox Support, Business hours, save favorite, social login, user review, claim a listing, SEO options and so many more. Golo has integration with these plugins: Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, MailChimp, Loco Translation, WooCommerce, and Checkout Field Editor.

Last but not least, with the theme package you will get a flutter-based source code to create your mobile app for the theme to turn the place listing website into a native mobile app.

Kaskad – City Guide WordPress Theme

If you want to create a modern listing place directory with a smart theme, Kaskad can help you do that with its advanced features and options. It is multi-language ready, customizable, fully responsive, and SEO optimized. It includes features like, many custom shortcodes, fully responsive design, one-click-demo install, Revolution Slider,

It allows you to monetize your directory website with paid memberships. You can customize the design with 850+ Goole Fonts, unlimited colors, Elementor page builder, Revolution Slider, and Visual CSS style editor. The theme also supports Contact Form 7 to allow visitors to contact the listing owners.

The best part is that it can be extended with a paid mobile app called Wapppress ($22) for Android or iWappPress ($22) for iOS.This theme is a perfect solution for a travel locations directory website that attracts visitors.

See You Again

We have handpicked these themes after performing hours of research just for you. Now, it’s up to you to pick up the theme that really suits your desire. But we will suggest you see their demo before making any purchase. If you are using or enjoying any great theme (apart from these ones) right now, don’t hesitate to share that one in the comment section below so that all of us can be benefitted.

If you liked our posts, don’t forget to subscribe to our blog so that we can notify you once any post is published. Directorist is now on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn! You can also join the Directorist Community for sharing your thoughts and experiences relating to the directory niche. Come and join us to see what we’re up to.

Luckily, WordPress themes offer both simplicity and power, making it easier than ever to build a top-tier real estate directory without the need for professional developers. Today, we’ve curated a selection of the best WordPress real estate directory themes.

Let’s explore how they can elevate your directory.

5 Best WordPress Real Estate Directory Themes

While we construct this listicle, we have kept in mind the ability to create a real estate directory with the theme package itself so that you don’t have to pay extra for other 3rd party WordPress directory plugins. Note that all of the themes compiled here do not come in free versions except the one shown in the bonus tips section.

dRealEstate (Premium)

dRealEstate is a premium WordPress real estate directory theme that ships with a bunch of premium extensions including a plugin called Directorist that is solely built to create not only amazing real estate directories but also any other directories you can imagine under the sun.

The theme is 100% mobile responsive and has a dedicated native mobile app (Android & iOS) powered by flutter which can help you reach more than 7.4 billion mobile users from across the globe. However, you will have to buy the app separately to work with the theme in tandem.

Some of the notable features include multi-directory scalability, Tax & GDPR ready, comparing listings, Elementor widgets (17), Gutenberg blocks (16), Oxygen page builder Elements (17), Booking & Appointment feature, Business hours, Google Maps, OpenStreet Maps, Social Login, list or grid view, CSV export-import, email notifications, one-click-demo importer, breadcrumbs, and integration with MailChimp, BuddyBoss, BuddyPress, contact form 7, etc.

It lets you build your directory with a dedicated drag-and-drop-based directory builder having unlimited custom fields. You can create an advanced search form with endless customizations. You can also use the listings slider and carousel to showcase the property listings.

The theme has a cool feature called Live Chat that allows the visitors to chat with real estate listing owners with other features like reporting a listing, adding to favorites, and much more. Apart from charging the listing owners for their listing submissions, you can also create different subscription-based pricing plans for the listing owners along with other passive sources of income like affiliated ads managers, rank featured listings, and so on to earn profit from your real estate directory.

With the theme, you can receive payments through popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net together with an offline bank transfer payment system. It has spam protection with Google’s reCaptcha and you will get regular security patch updates so that your website remains safe from hackers.

dRealEstate theme also provides a separate frontend dashboard for the listing owners and site visitors so you don’t have to give access to the backend of your website. It supports RTL languages and comes with a WPML plugin and Loco Translation plugin integrations.

If you want to create your real estate directory website in just a few minutes, then it is the perfect theme to start with.

MyHome

With MyHome, you can create amazing and flexible real estate directories with a fleet of functionalities. The theme requires no prior coding know-how because it has an intuitive built-in drag-and-drop-based page builder that has 18 more modules than the WPBakery page builder.

As you might have already guessed, the theme is highly customizable as it has a single-click demo import that offers six tailored demos and 14 homepages with ready-to-use preset pages, unlimited custom fields, and a free library of copyright-free images and videos available for use for free of cost.

Out of the box, the theme ships with an advanced search form that allows the visitors to search with parameters like instant search results, map searches, classic searches with saved searches option, keyword autocomplete, and field relationship options. It also enables you to show related properties and nearby ones while a user is viewing a particular travel listing.

Other premium features include listing sliders, Captcha, email notifications, and monetizations through options like subscription-based pricing plans. You can receive payments from payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and regular offline bank transfer options. The theme has integrations with popular plugins like Yoast SEO Plugin, WP Bakery Page Builders, Visual Composer, Ultimate Addons, and many more.

The theme also supports the registration/login process via social authentication (Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn) to eliminate the need to input email and passwords every time a visitor lands on your directory website. Not to mention, MyHome also supports the pre-registration submission option to let visitors do their job as fast as possible.

It also has integration with the premium Easy Social Share Plugin buttons so that users can share listings effortlessly. If you need a feature-rich real estate directory theme, it will be one of the best options out there.

Selio

In our third pick, Selio as a theme shines from a different perspective as a go-to real estate directory website solution. With this theme, you can create any type of mobile-responsive real estate directory in WordPress. The theme comes with essential features like many exclusive home pages, elementor support, OpenStreet Maps, Google Maps, SVG Maps, rank packages, subscription packages, Live chat, GDPR support, RTL support, Multilanguage support with auto-translate support via Mymemory & Google API.

The theme also lets the visitors compare real estate listings or properties with one another to make a better-informed decision. Interestingly, it also has a currency converter and mortgage, loan calculator. Other features include Social Login, Google reCaptcha, report a listing, add to favorite, quick listing submission, and a save search option.

Finally, they have plenty of payment gateway integrations with popular platforms like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, Amazon Pay, PayFast, Square, and many more.

Real Spaces

Real Spaces is another sleek theme to create a mobile responsive real estate directory website. The theme features Twitter Bootstrap for full responsiveness, Revolution Slider, List/grid property view, a working contact form, Isotope galleries, font-awesome web-font icons, Google font support, Google map integration, Lates Twitter Feeds widget, 10 prebuilt color schemes, and unlimited color options for customization.

The theme allows the visitors and listing owners to submit real estate property listings directly from the frontend eliminating the need to give them wp-admin access from the backend. Luckily, the multiple-page layouts will entertain you with different design recipes. It also has multiple blog layouts and gallery layouts for added benefits.

Finally, the theme also boasts of an advanced filtered search option with a save search feature in place. Like other themes, it includes features like add to favorite and compare listings options so that the buyers can analyze their desired listings in a better way before they purchase them. The one-click demo install will help you to set up your real estate directory at lightning speed.

If you are looking for a light theme that has practical features, this is the theme to go for.

Findeo

Findeo is designed specifically to meet user experience with its amazing frontend user dashboard, drag-&- drop-based form builder to create advanced search forms. With the theme, you can charge your users with the listings they upload or charge them with a monthly subscription form. You can receive payments through popular payment gateways like Visa, PayPal, American Express, and MasterCard with the theme.

The theme comes with exciting features like location autocomplete, Google Maps integration, one-click demo import, multiple listing grids, and much more. The theme has a handy WP All import plugin integration to import listings when you need it.

Findeo also has integration with Visual Composer and Revolution Slider making it a complete package to create and shape your real estate directory exactly the way you want.

Bonus Tips: Do You Want a Free Directory Theme?

If you want to start a directory website for free, don’t lose hope. You can use the free directory theme called “OneListing“. However, you will have to use a free WordPress directory plugin called “Directorist“. With this free theme and free plugin, you will be able to create a real estate directory website that contains the following free features:

• a drag-and-drop-based form builder with unlimited custom fields
• Gutenberg blocks (16)
• Elementor widgets (17)
• featured listing
• add to favorite
• report abuse
• frontend listing submission & management
• 100% mobile responsive UI & UX design
• advanced search filters
• multi-directory scalability
• CSV export-import feature
• Google map
• OpenStreet map
• contact form 7
• flag & report
• tax ready
• and so many more

The theme is an all-purpose directory theme. Meaning, that you can not only build a directory website for real estate properties but also for any other listings like restaurants, doctors, user directories, local business listings, automobile directories and so many more.

Summing up

All the themes mentioned above are amazing ones to try out for your real estate directory website. If you are someone who is looking for the themes that are proven to be the most effective ones, these themes can’t just be defeated. Pick a theme that truly resonates with your dream and make your journey enjoyable.

In today’s article, we will be discussing our flagship directory website builder tool, Directorist’s aims, and perspectives like what is it for and what are the use cases of it. So, Let’s jump get going.

What is a Directory Niche?

In case you did not know, the directory niche is basically a web-based database management system that stores information on a particular niche (or niches) that some users can submit while other users can access, and retrieve their desired items or listings using a search option. Now you may be wondering what is the benefit of the website owner, aren’t ya?

Well, the website owner can monetize his or her website through different methods. For example, the website owner can charge for featured listings, rank featured listings, view private listings, place paid ads and affiliate links, and so on.

Still can’t figure out what it is? Well, you may have heard of websites like Yelp, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, OLX, Airbnb, etc. which are all directory websites. Visitors go to those websites to find out their desired Restaurants, Local businesses, classified ads, employee or student directories, etc. while other users go to those websites to list their goods, services, or businesses.

Background of Developing the Directory Website Builder, Directorist

We developed Directorist when we saw that the world was getting inundated with data and we tried to make the data retrieval process faster, smoother, and more user-friendly. In addition to that, some people around us were continuously asking for an easy-to-build directory solution. Soon after, we conducted market research and found that there is a huge market demand for an easy-to-use directory solution.

And so we hit upon the plan to develop a directory plugin to find out a solution that people were looking for. We have built the free tool in a way that is scalable via a fleet of extensions and mobile apps. To date, there are around 10000 active customers from across the globe with a satisfactory 4.7 rating out of 5.

Who are the Ideal Customers / Who is It Aimed at?

As a directory website builder, Directorist is primarily aimed at people who are seeking out financial freedom – people who want to get out of their mandatory 8 hour-long white-collar desk job. If you are such a free-spirited person, you can go for Directorist.

There is no mandatory age group to use the plugin. Anyone above 12 years old can use the plugin and build a directory website with Directorist. The plugin is intuitive, spam-proof, 100% mobile responsive, and full of useful features.

Directorist’s Perspective and Usecases as a Directory Builder

So, how Directorist can be useful with its unique and exclusive features? Let’s see how Directorist can benefit you in creating and maintaining a directory website. Assuming that you want to create your own directory website with Directorist. Here is how your business can be boosted up with it from your perspective:

Scalability through mobile apps

There are 6.648 billion smartphone users from around the world. Thus, many directory website owners want to acquire these smartphone users using iOS and Android-based apps.

Fortunately, Directorist comes with iOS and Android-based mobile apps to turn your WordPress-based directory website into a native mobile app.

Complete free core features to create any kind of directory website

With the Directorist free version, you can not only set up a directory solution but can also monetize it for the featured listing option. In addition to that, you can also receive payments through the bank payment system in the free version.

A scalable solution with free and premium themes & extensions

Directorist has both a free and premium version. One can effortlessly start his/her own directory business for free with its two free themes and free integrations with other page builders. Later on, he or she can scale up the website using premium themes or extensions.

Various premium monetization options to earn profit

Who doesn’t want to earn in multiple ways? With Directorist, you can earn in different ways like:

• Charge for listings
• Featured listings
• Sell premium listings
• Allow businesses to claim listings
• Charge for viewing private listings
• Allow private/sponsored advertising
• Charge for membership
• Sell business leads
• Promote affiliate products
• Allow sponsored articles/guest posting
• Bookings & appointment
• Access control
• Ranked featured lists
• Paid ad placement

Want to learn them in detail? Give a read to this article on how to monetize your directory website with Directorist.

A bunch of payment methods to Collect Payments

To stop cart abandonment, you must have multiple payment methods in place. That’s because all of your potential customers may not use the same payment gateway and when they go to the checkout page, they can abandon their cart if they don’t see the payment gateway they are using. Fortunately, Directorist supports multiple payment methods including Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net.

Built-in directory webpage builder

The tool ships with a drag-and-drop-based directory builder that helps you control webpages like the All Listing page, Single Listing layout, Submission page, search widget, and many more. In addition to that, you can even use custom fields other than the predefined fields to collect as much user data as you want.

Related Post: Directorist Custom Fields – Elevate Your Directorist Experience with Custom Fields

Page builder support for design flexibility

We discovered that a lot of our users are using page builders like Elementor, Oxygen Page Builder, and Gutenberg. Consequently, we have developed 17 Elementor Widgets, 17 Oxygen Page Builder components, and 16 Gutenberg blocks. We are also planning to integrate with other popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, Divi, and Brizy very soon. However, Elementor and Gutenberg are integrated even with the free version whereas the Oxygen Page builder is available as a premium extension.

Related Post: How to Create a Directory Website Using Oxygen Page Builder

Multiple mapping sources to choose from

Not all people have the same taste or the same intention. Thus we have incorporated both Google Maps and the OpenStreet maps into the system. You can select the map that you want to view when your users see listings.

Never settle in one directory niche

With Directorist, you don’t have to settle only in a particular niche. With the multidirectory feature, you can create multiple directory niches and this way you can expand your business even more. To cite an example, you may start with an automobile directory but later you might want to sell accessories like automobile parts, stickers, and engine oil as another niche.

Easy translation, RTL Language Support

We know our users aren’t from the same background so we made the tool easily translatable. If you are an RTL (Right to left) language (such as Arabic, Hebrew, Pashto, Urdu, Sindhi, etc.) user, Directorist got you covered with it.

Frontend listing submission

Your users can submit their listings from the front end of a directory website. Thus you don’t have to give access to the backend making your website less vulnerable to hackers.

Here are some of the premium features to look at

Directorist has more than 30 extensions. Here are a few of them:

• Let your users send private messages to each other

This extension will allow the visitors to send messages to the listing owners. This is a necessary feature as the customers often desperately seek out information from the listing owners.

• Drive more traffic using the power of Yoast SEO

No website can grow steadily and remarkably if it is not SEO-friendly. Therefore we took the concept of SEO seriously and integrated Directorist with the Yoast SEO plugin.

• Wage Email campaigns with ease using the MailChimp integration

We know how much important it is to promote and communicate with your users with Email marketing. In this regard, you will get a premium MailChimp integration that helps you collect the

• BuddyBoss & BuddyPress integration to give a social networking vibe

With Directorist, you can also make your website more engaging and interactive using either the BuddyBoss integration or the BuddyPress integration. It makes your directory website as functional as a social media website.

• Google reCaptcha to prevent spammers

Nowadays, we can not imagine a website data submission without using Google’s Recaptcha feature. Why is that? Because it helps you keep your website spam-free. As a result, you will only get the necessary data by filtering the unwanted ones. Cool, isn’t it?

You can also check other upcoming features or the status of their development from the Directorist team’s Roadmap.

Over to You

That’s all there’s to it on Directorist’s aims and perspectives. We’ve only mentioned the key points here but there are more features and options under the hood. If you are yet to try it out, we recommend you give a shot at the demo version or download the free version to get a hands-on experience. If you are already using Directorist, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts down below.

Try Demo Now!

Get the Free Version Now!

If you liked our posts, don’t forget to subscribe to our blog so that we can notify you once any post is published. Directorist is now on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn! You can also join the Directorist Community for sharing your thoughts and experiences relating to the directory niche. Come and join us to see what we’re up to.

However, if you are to see the battle between WordPress directory theme vs WordPress directory plugin, you are in the right place. In today’s article, we will be addressing the dilemma to understand which one you should choose for your directory business. So no more fusses, let’s jump right in!

Before we move on…

What Is a WordPress Theme?

A WordPress theme is a tool that dictates what the appearance of your WordPress website will be in terms of color, styles, and other graphics. Themes are inherently related to WordPress. No matter which type of website you are going to build, you must pick an appropriate theme that resonates with that particular website.

Interestingly, themes are more than just what you may think of their authority to change the appearance of your website. Their pervasive activities widely range from as great as changing the layout of your website to even changing the font family or the color or hyperlinked text.

But themes do not cease just in appearance! The excitement comes in when you can extend their functionalities using plugins or extensions. Isn’t that great?

What Is a WordPress Plugin?

A plugin on the other hand is a bit of code that works more from the backend than from the frontend. They are the hidden codes that extend the functionalities of your WordPress website. Some plugins have nothing to do with the front-end appearance at all. Plugins range from a little to massive ones.

For example, they can sometimes fix your WordPress website’s small glitches by adding tweaks or they can extend the functionalities of your website by turning your WordPress website into an eCommerce store, Learning Management System, social networking site, and so forth.

However, some plugins may release themes in the form of extensions so that they render the visuals or appearance exactly the way the plugin wants.

WordPress Directory Theme vs WordPress Directory Plugin – Which One to Pick?

Based on the below-mentioned criteria, we will be showing you the reasons for which one to pick for your directory business.

Freedom in appearance & customization

If you want to create a business directory website, customization is crucial. To customize your Directory website, you must need a directory niche-oriented theme that is compatible with page builders and the directory plugin you are going to use.

If you are using a WordPress Directory Theme instead of a WordPress Directory Plugin, you are limiting yourself to that theme’s appearance. On the other hand, if you are using a WordPress Directory Plugin, you have the opportunity to use any WordPress theme so that you don’t limit yourself to only one theme.

Scalability in extension & integration

WordPress plugins are developed in a way a third-party developer can easily build extensions and can integrate them with other platforms. Don’t get me wrong! Themes are also scalable but the thing is they are not optimized to develop extensions and integrations the easy way. On the contrary, plugins are built in a way that is scalable so that you can have the possibility to get third-party extensions for them.

Trends in developers & users

If you do quick product research, you will find that great developers are rolling out with WordPress Plugins rather than WordPress directory themes. Meaning they also feel comfortable building plugins rather than building themes for directory niche. In other words, they initially build the plugin after that they create a theme(s) for it. Therefore, it would be wise if you stick to the trend so that you don’t feel stranded in the days to come.

Freedom to choose niche-based themes

If you are starting with a particular niche category, you may later want to add more niche categories to your directory website. In this case, your current theme may not align with the design requirements of your new niche(s). So, if you are building your website with a theme-based directory tool, you are doomed. That’s because you can not change the default theme’s appearance.

On the flip side, if you are using a WordPress directory theme, you can choose any theme. Interestingly, some WordPress directory plugins come up with a wide range of niche-specific themes like Local Business Listing theme, Restaurant directory themes, Classified ads listing theme, Lawyer directory theme, Hospital directory theme, etc.

The Bottom Line

Finally, the key takeaway from here is that you can have more flexibility with a directory plugin than a theme. Hence, we can conclude that a WordPress directory plugin clearly has much more advantages than using a WordPress directory theme. Thus, we recommend you go for a WordPress directory plugin instead of a WordPress theme.

If you are a directory website owner, which one you are using right now? Which one is more convenient for you? Don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

For your information, a paid directory is when you charge for every listing your users upload on your directory website. But if you are just beginning a directory website, you may be in a fix wondering how to set listing rates. Meaning, if you charge too low, you may lose tons of money. On the flip side, charging too high may repel your customers from purchasing your listing service.

Worry not! This article will answer questions like how much should you charge for your listings, or do you have to charge annually or monthly. Remember, setting an appropriate listing rate, will help you get more business in the future. So, let’s dig deeper.

Emphasize Value Rather than Just Fixing Rates

Why people will prefer your business directory listing website to others to submit their listings? Well, it’s nothing but the unique value as an incentive. It means if you don’t provide value for the price your customers are paying, you are going to lose both paid customers and potential.

No matter which business directory website you are running, you must provide extra value to your customers. Why? Because it creates a sense of exclusivity to your customers. It also makes them feel different from others and gives them a topic to talk about and share thoughts with each other. The more people talk about your service the more the chances are to sell your directory listings service.

In addition, the concept of uniqueness and exclusivity brings another topic called scarcity that makes your listing rate appear more lucrative to get more deals and grow your business exponentially.

Then again, the tough question arises, “What is the optimized pricing plan that creates a sense of exclusivity to the customers?”. One way to create a sense of exclusivity is to set premium pricing plan tiers. But, we recommend you give a special value to your customers in return before you charge higher for the premium listings.

The Typical Going Rate in Real-life Business Directories

Unfortunately, the typical industry rate for directory listings is not well-defined. Howbeit, according to Moz, “Pricing for local directory listings can range from $29 to $499 per year.”.

However, we suggest you compare your directory website with industry leaders like Yelp and with other local directory websites in your area to set the listing rate. In this case, Yelp typically has a higher pricing rate than your local directory listings. Remember, the higher the traffic, the higher the listing rate you can charge.

Examples of some listing rates:

How to set listing rates – Yelp

Yelp is one of the leading business directories from around the world:

So, the basic plan for Yelp starts from (4*52) dollars = $208

and the most premium plan for Yelp is (19*52) dollars = $988

How to set listing rates – Things to Do in Athens and Greece

Things to do in Athens and Greece is a local directory in Greece. Here is their pricing plan:

So, the annual pricing plan starts from {(25.65/60*30)*12} dollars = $153.9

And the premium pricing plan is {(99/90*30)*12} dollars = $396

How to set listing rates – N49

N49 is a Canadian local business directory. The monthly pricing plan for N49 is as follows:

So, their annual pricing plan starts from $120 and culminates at the premium plan at $1200

And their lifetime deals for listings include:

So, their lifetime pricing plan starts from $400 to $1500.

We hope these data will give you a rough idea of the typical industry-going rate for the listings of a directory website.

Then How Much below the Listing Price Should I offer?

For startups:

Now, if you are a beginner you may be wondering how much listing price should you offer, isn’t it? Well, if you are starting your directory business in a busy city where businesses are booming, you can give a 50% coupon code in acquiring new customers.

Moving forward, you should not charge more than 40 dollars per month. If you are charging weekly it should not exceed 10 dollars and finally, if you are charging annually you should not charge anything more than 300 dollars. If you, on the other hand, are on a niche-based directory, you can also go for the annual pricing plan.

For a running business with decent traffic:

In case, you are getting a handsome amount of traffic per month, you should not charge less than 10 dollars/week, or less than 40 dollars/month, and 400 dollars/month, or otherwise, you will lose the value of your directory business.

Still Struggling? – Try Our Pricing Plan Extension out.

Be that as it may, you are using the free version of Directorist, you can still charge for your listings and featured listings as well by turning the monetization feature on. But you may not be happy with only one pricing tier. So, how can you create multiple pricing tiers?

Well, it is a piece of cake if you extend your directory website with the Directorist Pricing Plan. It will help you set the listing rates by creating different pricing plan tiers just like Yelp, or Foursquare, or Tripadvisor does.

Some prominent benefits of the Directorist Pricing Plan extension include:

• Adding TAX/VAT in pricing plans. [NEW]
• Creating unlimited plans with different sets of features.
• Earning through multiple plan types — Package Plans & Pay Per Listing.
• Creating a plan with limited features for a specific period to let users try before purchasing.
• Offering “feature listings” in plans to attract more users and increase earnings.
• Controlling everything from a very simple interface & create an attractive plan with a few clicks.
• Being able to charge your users on every recurrence of your chosen duration (depends on the selected gateway), therefore, helps you generate revenue inflow throughout the year.
• Compatible with all payment add-ons of the Directorist. So, you can collect payment with ease.
• Nearly zero configuration needed. Just install, create plans and you are ready to go.

What You Should Keep in Mind Before Setting the Listing Rate

Now that you know the basics of listing rates across the directory website industry, we suggest you follow a few factors that may help you optimize the listing rate to get more business.

1. Observe your local market

Before you set any hard number, you must take the demographic information into your account. You should ask yourself the following questions:

• what is the median income of the local population?
• is there enough businesses in your area?
• are businesses expanding in your area?

The answers are quite significant to dictate whether you will be successful at your directory business in your area. Remember, the higher the number of businesses in your area, the more the listing submission will be and thus you can charge higher. In fact, the larger cities usually justify the higher pricing for your listing due to a large number of potential customers.

2. Analyze your market competition

You must take a closer look at the competitors in your area. However, if there are fewer, if not, no competitors, you can enjoy a monopolistic environment. Again, monopoly does not mean you will charge unrealistic and impractical pricing. Rather, you should provide value to your users for what they are paying.

Fortunately or unfortunately, many directory website owners do not consider other types of competitors like local newspaper ads, local FM radio ads, TVC, sponsorships, and direct mails. If the local business owners are using these platforms, you must lower your listing rate even though the fact that there are no competitors or only a few competitors out there.

Don’t be worried about competition. It is rather a good thing, that is, businesses are booming in your area. Instead of panicking and copying others, just be yourself while providing value and set the listing rate as per the competition.

3. Set a practical revenue goal

Another factor to consider is to set the financial goals. It usually means setting a feasible hard number for revenue, either at the end of a year month, or week. In this regard, what you will have to do is to do reverse engineering, that is, achieve that revenue number by making the local businesses sign up on your directory website.

For instance, if you want to generate a revenue number of $100/month in a recurring income, and you charge $5 per month for each listing, you will have to sign up 20 businesses in a month. As simple as that!

Now, the more revenue you want to generate in a month the more you will have to make the businesses signup. That’s it!

4. Make up your directory business costs

No business can survive if it can not cover all the startup investment and ongoing expenses like marketing expenses or other operational costs. Before you charge for the listings make sure that you are charging well enough to cover all the costs associated with your business.

5. Wow your clients providing some extra value

If your clients are generating more calls, messages, and other interactions from their listings, it is time to charge more. But while charging more, make sure you are not overcharging them. If you charge too much, chances are high that they will churn or they will simply unsubscribe to your service. Then again, whatever you charge make sure you are aligning your listing rate to the value you are providing to your customers.

If you want to wow your customers, make sure you are providing extra value apart from the documented values.

6. Set the listing rate as per your website traffic

If you are just starting out your directory, it’s quite normal you won’t be getting a good number of visitors. Over time, your directory website will generate more traffic You can do so by adding listings, applying SEO techniques, and other digital marketing strategies to promote your site like giving away coupons or paid ads, etc. Thus, you can eventually justify the higher listing pricing tiers when you get a good number of site traffic.

Now, It’s Your Turn!

As we said already, you can charge more with time when you start to get more traffic no matter which type of pricing plan you are setting for your directory website. But whatever you do, make sure your listing rate is justifying the pricing plan you are offering.

However, if you are still struggling to set the listing rate, don’t forget to share your problem in the comment section below. We will try our best to assist you in setting listing rates.

That’s because you need to ensure that your theme supports the basic features of a directory or classified website. For example, you need to make sure that your theme lets you create a submission page,

But no worries! We are always out there to help you find your desired theme or the theme that you need for your website. We have taken months to test and conduct research to find out the best car dealership WordPress theme.

Must-have Features for a WordPress Car Dealer Theme

If you are to pick a WordPress car dealer theme, you need to make sure they are not only packed up with features but also scalable through extensions. Here are a few features to look at before you choose a car dealership WordPress theme:

• Free Version Availability: Whether the automobile WordPress theme you choose has a free, premium or freemium plan.

• Pricing Plans: How valuable is it? Does the pricing plan automobile directory theme really suit the needs of your automobile directory website?
• Support Duration: How long you will be receiving support? Does the support duration do justice to the price you are paying for?
• Mobile Apps Availability: There are more than 6.648 billion mobile phone users from around the globe. So, does the Automotive directory theme come up with a native mobile app for iOS or Android?
• Advanced Form Builder: Does it have any drag and drop based form builder to design and customize the pages you will be creating along the way? Does the theme support unlimited custom fields
• Multi Directory: Is the car WordPress theme have a multidirectory feature? For instance, you may start with listing only automotive vehicles at first. But as time goes by, you may change your mind to list automotive vehicle accessories like steering, exhausts, headlights, seats, car audio, etc.
• CSV Bulk Importer: It’s not unusual that you might have to switch to the new WordPress car listing theme, from the older solution. For this purpose, you must make sure that the new theme that choose supports the CSV bulk importer feature.
• Search with Advanced Filters: A great search option is like the key feature of your directory website. Why? It is the primary tool that your visitors will be using to find out their desired listing from the ocean of the listing. What is more important here is that you must
• Frontend Listing Submission and Management​: Does the theme allow the users to submit and manage their listings from the frontend in order to give them a cool appearance, unlike the dull and monotonous backend of WordPress dashboard? Frontend Listing Management is also important to stop any malicous login as you restrict the users from using the backend of your website.
• Exclusive Extensions: A scalable WordPress automobile directory theme comes up with a fleet of extensions as you will need them later when your website expands in terms of users and site visitors.
• Page Builder Support: These days almost all professional themes ship with the privilege of page builder support. For example, if you are an expert using page builders like Elementor, Oxygen Page Builder Support, or Gutenberg block editor, you need the page builder support.
• WooCommerce Plugin Compatibility​: In case your website is already using WooCommerce, you can use the default payment gateways of your purpose.
• Develop Booking System: It is an optional feature for a car directory website. But if you have the plan to create a multidirectory website, you may run a restaurant directory or a hotel booking website like Airbnb.
• Built-in Checkout and Popular Gateways: Your car WordPress theme must support multiple and popular payment gateways. You can ask yourself, “Does the car WordPress theme you are choosing support popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.net?”.
• Earn Through Monetization: This is the most important aspect because without the monetization service, how will you be able to make money? So, make sure the WordPress car dealer theme you are going to choose has these features.
• Live Chat / Private Messaging: If you allow your site visitors to ask their queries directly to the listing owners, your automobile directory will be more engaging. So, check your for these services
• Ads Manager: Don’t limit yourself to the earnings from the listing owners. You can also maximize your revenue by placing third-party advertisements on the web pages.
• Social Login: Social login allows your users to log in and sign up without putting their credentials manually. They can log in and sign up with their Google and Facebook profile with just a single click. So, double-check the WordPress car dealer theme you are picking up if it is scalable with this service.
• WPML Support: WPML Support or WordPress Multilingual Support is important if you want to easily translate your directory plugin to any other language.
• RTL Support: RTL Support or Right to Left language support will be important if your users speak languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Pashto, Urdu, Sindhi, etc.
• Google reCaptcha: These days Google reCaptcha is imperative for a directory website to thwart spamming on your directory website.
• More premium features: More premium features include Face Detection, Google reCaptcha, mark as sold, listing FAQs, image gallery, listing slider and carousel, compare listings, WPML support, RTL support,
• Miscellaneous: You can also consider how many platforms the WordPress car dealer theme you are going to choose is integrated with.

Best Car Dealership WordPress Themes- Our Favorite 5 Picks

We have handpicked these themes based on their versatility, scalability, and usability. Still, carefully vet them before you pick one of them:

1. dCar

dCar is not only an aesthetically satisfying WordPress car dealer theme but also packed with a heap of features that you need to create a professional car directory website or classified listing car website online. It is a great theme in the sense that it supports most of the use cases we mentioned above.

The design has carefully been developed so that you can perfectly showcase cars by creating multi-directories. For example, you can create two car directories – one is “New Car Directory” and the other one is the “Used Car Directory”. Now, not only multiple manufacturers can list their new cars in the “New Car Directory” but also other visitors who want to sell their used cars in the “Used Car Directory”.

When you buy the theme, you will get a dedicated WordPress directory plugin called Directorist that will facilitate you to add any functionalities you can imagine. It is 100% mobile responsive and it is also integrated with Elementor, Oxygen Page Builder, Gutenberg Block Editor, MailChimp, BuddyBoss and so many more. The completely free core version has a drag-and-drop-based directory website builder to design and control the elements on different pages.

If you are looking for a customizable search tool, the theme has got you covered with its directory builder. It also comes with a premium native mobile app both for iOS and Android.

The theme will allow you to monetize your website in various ways such as Charge for listings, Featured listings, Rank Featured Listings, Paid Ads Placement, Claim Listings, Membership, Placing Affiliate Links and so many more. Worried about receiving payments? dCar also has integration with Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net together with a manual bank transfer system.

The theme ships with a slider, CSV export-import option, Easy Translation by WPML, and Loco Translate. So, if you are from a non-English speaking region, it will give you a headstart. Last but not least, RTL support makes the theme a complete package.

2. Automotive

Automotive is a great WordPress-based car dealer theme that can build any classified website for vehicles. You can get payments from the PayPal payment gateway for each of the cars your users’ lists. It’s a mobile responsive theme that can render high-quality images.

The Automotive theme is creative enough with its exclusive VIN Number Decoder feature. With this feature, the listing owners can submit their listings lightning-fast because they will only have to input the VIN number and the submission form will automatically be filled out.

Like dCar theme, you can translate the theme to any other language. It also comes with other features like a Craiglist code generator, multi-currency and metrics, and a handy Finance calculator that helps you save time.

Another benefit of the theme is that it has an automatic CSV export-import feature that allows you to schedule import inventory files, and many more.

Though the theme does not ship with as many page builders or a dedicated drag-and-drop builder as dCar does, you will get the visual page builder included in the package. On top of that, you can change the elements and styles with the default WordPress customizer. If you want this theme for your car directory website, you can consider this.

3. Classiads

Classiads is another great WordPress theme that enables you to create a car directory with great control. The theme has a good-looking frontend dashboard. It has unlimited design layouts with integration with popular page builders like Elementor and Visual Composer. It also includes an advanced search option and unlimited custom content fields.

The theme is easy to set up and you can use the demo importer to create your website faster. It also allows you to move ads to the top using features like Bump Up Ads, Featured Ads and sticky Ads option. It has an integration with WooCommerce and it lets you post from the frontend. As far as payment gateway is concerned, it has integration with PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net along with offline Bank transfers.

The users can also login via Social media from the front end, use subscription plans, and much more. The core features also include Revolution Slider, a bbPress integration, MailChimp integration, Google Maps integration & RTL Support & WPML integration.

4. Motors

Motors is another powerful theme aimed at building a motor car dealer website. It ships with 17 polished demos, listing maps, and an advanced Search option to give greater control to the website visitors. Motors also support the VIN decoder tool just like Automotive. Meaning you can let your users submit a listing faster with auto-populated field data.

It ships with a vehicle comparison tool and is integrated with popular platforms like MailChimp, PayPal, auto manager, Contact Form 7, WooCommerce, Revolution Slider, and WPML plugin.

In addition to that, it supports multicurrency, Craiglist Posting interface, built-in listing stats, 500+ useful theme options, a finance calculator, and many more. You will also get a grid and list layout to choose from.

They have a good reputation for great customer service so you can pick the theme without thinking twice.

5. AutoPro

The WordPress theme, AutoPro is solely focused on the vehicle and automobile industry. With that in mind, it serves all car agencies, repair stores, dealerships, and more. You can create visually appealing web pages as it has an integration with a popular page builder, WPBakery and it also includes the Revolution Slider. it also offers movable sidebars and unlimited color options. The theme is 100% mobile responsive and it supports full-width mode. Thus customizability won’t be an issue for the theme.

It includes some features and options like several financial aid props, test drives, special information requests, purchase budgets, and loan calculators. AutoPro is also integrated with Contact Form 7, WC Marketplace Compatible, and WC Vendors Compatible. The theme also supports automatic import with just a single click. As far as multilingual language compatibility is concerned, it is readily translatable. So, no worries if your users are non-native English speakers.

Wrapping Up

And that’s all! Pick a WordPress car dealer theme from here and reap the awards later. If you are still confused, let us know your questions in the comment section below. We will try our best to help you with an appropriate answer. If you are already using one of these themes, don’t forget to share your experience as well.