Your directory website is growing in size and complexity as multiple directories with tons of listings piling up every day. Offering a seamless and efficient search experience has become crucial to retaining visitors and turning them into revenue. If you’re using Directorist, the most widely-used WordPress plugin with more than 20 thousand active users, now you can improve the search experience of your visitors by unifying results across all your directories.

Introducing the new Universal Search of Directorist extension that can power up managing single and multi-directory structures. What does this extension offer?

• Pull all the relevant listings and categories from every active directory into one clean, organized results page.
• It saves your visitors’ time, reduces their frustration of not finding what they are looking for and helps your users find what they need quickly.
• Not only does it ensure your customer satisfaction, but it also increases engagement, as visitors often find more than what they are seeking.

Learn more nitty-gritty details on the Directorist Universal Search Extension page.

What are Multi-Directory Websites?

Directorist allows users to build and manage multiple directories independently on their single classified listing sites. Each, with its layout and functionality, hosts different kinds of listings, such as:

• Jobs
• Real Estate
• Service Providers
• Events
• Classified Ads
• Restaurants
• Local Businesses

Craigslist, Thumbtack, Yelp, and OLX are popular examples of such listings. You already know most, if not all, of them.

Running a Multi-Directory Website on WordPress

WordPress is the world’s most popular Content Management Systems (CMS). The greatest strength of WordPress is empowering entrepreneurs, businesses, and individual professionals without coding skills to build their websites with easy-to-manage oceans of plugins and add-ons.

Unlike many other niches, directory and classified listing businesses can also build their complete websites on WordPress using popular plugins like Directorist. The truth is that Directorist is not just a plugin but a complete ecosystem in this niche. It offers tons of extensions and themes developed for this particular business category. Universal search is one of the latest extensions launched to meet the unique needs of its users in this business category.

What is a Universal Search Feature?

Typically, multi-directory listing sites combine different types and categories that use directory-wise search. The advanced search helps visitors filter their preferences before putting a more specific search term in the query box. However, due to different names and categories or the overlap of listings in other directories, visitors may not be able to find their desired item on the search results page.

Universal search is an additional feature that works across all directories on the website and simplifies the search results by showing all relevant results while maintaining the directory separation on the interface. It improves the user experience while assuring that visitors spend less time searching and more time on decision-making, which impacts the business’s revenue. We have illustrated a more detailed benefit of this feature below.

How Universal Search Extension Works on Directorist

The Universal Search extension is available to all users using WordPress, and the Directorist plugin runs and manages their multi-directory websites. Users can purchase this extension directly from the Directorist website.

In the Documentation section, we provided a technical step-by-step guide to use this extension on your Directorist-based multi-directory website. You can directly visit Universal Search Documentation or browse the following steps from the menu.

Home > Resources > Documentations > Extensions > Scroll down to find Universal Search and click on the link underneath the extension name to see its Documentation. For further queries and assistance, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Support Center.

How Universal Search Extension Benefits Users

Visitors are the key beneficiaries of the Universal Search feature on any multi-directory website. How can Directorist-powered multi-directory websites benefit visitors by offering a Universal Search feature? Here’s how.

1. Improved User Experience: Universal Search offers a quick and cross-category result against visitors’ search terms, making it easy to find what they seek. As a result, it improves the visitors’ user experience, resulting in quick execution and saving time. An improved User Experience ensures customer satisfaction and spreads the name through word of mouth.
2. Increase Session Durations: When visitors find more relevant items quickly against their search terms, they are more likely to stay on the site longer. The increased session duration allows the site owners to display more ads, get a few more clicks, and, in the end, earn more revenues.
3. Reduces Bounce Rate: When the visitors are in a rush or need quick assistance, they browse multiple websites at once, searching the same term across different sites, and if the search results do not meet their needs, they quickly leave the site, impacting the bounce rate. The Universal Search extension helps site owners reduce bounce rates by increasing session durations.
4. SEO Advantages: Search Engines no longer rely on website content only for ranking. They also consider user experience, session duration, bounce rates, relevancy, etc. As a result, by enjoying the above three benefits, website owners can also get SEO advantages, which may reflect on their DR (Domain Rating) and PA (Page Authority) scores.
5. Unlock Insights: While users stay longer on the website, scrolling through the items they discovered from the universal search result, website owners can also unlock valuable insights from their behavior and preferences by looking into website analytics. As a result, they can organize their directories and feature the most clicked and viewed items on top for future sessions.

The Universal Search extension is a handy feature for most multi-directory website owners. However, the key to getting these benefits is following the best practices.

Best Practices for Using Universal Search

1. Place the search button in a place where it will be visible and will not confuse the visitors. You can browse our different themes and use the most suitable one, where you can place your Universal Search option separately and make it visible to the visitors.
2. Use tools like Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar to see user behavior data, such as heatmaps or session recordings and screenshots, to identify if your customers are using it correctly. You can also identify where your visitors are stuck or which part of the site is making them interested from those data and visuals.
3. If the Universal Search results overwhelm visitors, advise them to use the directory-specific search. You can implement a Live Chat extension on your website to facilitate quick visitor interaction.
4. Before implementing the Universal Search extension, ensure your multi-directory listings are uniquely optimized and do not overlap.

Adding the Universal Search extension to your Directorist-powered WordPress website is one of the most impactful upgrades you can make. But make sure that you are also following the best practices.

Wrapping Up

Several studies found that personalized experiences keep customers happy. Value additions are a secret weapon in any competitive business, and classified listing and directory websites are no different. When you prioritize the user experience and customer satisfaction, you are right on track with the value addition game and more likely to sustain among tough competition. Therefore, with a simple setup process and all these powerful benefits, the Universal Search extension is a must-have feature for any serious multi-directory website owner.