The enhancements will include an improved Search Engine Friendly design. We found that this was extremely important for the 2010 design of the website and drastically increased our traffic from search engines, especially Google.  Google managed to crawl and index our listings every 5 days, and displayed the listings in the results soon afterward. These high ranking results drove tons of free traffic to our directory.

Needless to say this ‘organic’ traffic was invaluable to the businesses listed on our website, and [hopefully] provided our clients with fruitful internet marketing at no cost. Especially to those businesses who do not have their own websites. *in some cases our listings ranked higher in Google that the businesses’ own websites!

We want to improve the features offered to the users of the website.    This time around frequent users of Business Finder will be able to register on the directory.  By registering they will have access to tons of practical features and goodies.  It is extremely important that we improve the customer experience to give users a reason to come back to visit Business Finder.

The 2010 design offered communication methods to the users and businesses in the form of Newsletter Signup &  Contact Forms.  These features were extremely light weight in the 2010 design, but for 2011 we would like to create a full blown mass communication system.  Businesses will be able to use the bulk SMS & E-mail facility to contact thousands of customers using SMS or E-mail.  New additions will include an improved interface to manage contacts and to send messages.  Businesses will now be able to create Newsletter templates and schedule recurring newsletters.  Variables will also be introduced, which will make it easy to include the customer names or other details in the email / SMS messages.

Do you have any ideas for the directory?  Please leave a comment.