Directory: How To Be “The” Source Of Everything Your Members Have To Offer

Posted on May 17, 2022 in Directory

When a member directory looks like it’s yours and is consistent with your branding, your site visitors are more confident in the validity of your site as a definitive source. This week we are exploring how Membee’s new Directory fits seamlessly into your website by matching your branding while promoting your members through the easy-to-use visual features that separate membership levels and types – all without a single line of code or a web developer.

Augment Your Directory With Your Branding

One of the best practices to implement your directory is to make it look like part of your website, not just an external add-on – this includes your branding.

The more tightly integrated it appears, the more reliable your directory becomes as a definitive source for your members’ information.

Membee’s directory provides unprecedented styling control into the hands of the everyday Membee user. This meaMembee’s directory places unprecedented styling control into the hands of every Membee user. This means you don’t need to contact a web developer or acquire a technical skill set for your directory to look like it is an organic part of your website.

You can augment the directory to use your brand colors, allowing you to customize the:

Font to match your website
Link colors including hover and visited links
Button colors including hover and text color
Background colors throughout the directory

For example, the screenshot below shows the search results page with the same brand colors as the website:

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Unique Styling Overrides In Layouts

In case you missed it, the New Directory Layouts feature makes it easy to display members differently based on their membership level. To explore more, you can visit our post about Layouts below.

Automatically Add Value to Each Membership Level Using Directory Layouts

Taking it a step further, you can customize specific membership levels to display with different styling to visually promote them. In fact, you can override the styling for ANY layout. The most common styles to adjust are:

Background color
Font color
Link color (including active, hover, and visited links)

For example, in the screenshot below, gold members have no background, platinum members display in a light grey background, while featured members display with a powder blue background. This differentiates each one and highlights them in different ways.

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Featured Listings to Stand Out

Featured listings highlight your members, allowing them to stand out more in the list of search results

You can use and tailor the featured listing settings to suit your membership by:

Customizing the “Featured” text
Customizing the icon that indicates a featured listing

Furthermore, featured listings have access to the same customization as layouts. If you use featured listings, a layout is created automatically which is not limited to, but can allow you to:

Override the background color for featured listings to visually stand out more
Update the map pin color for featured listings
Customize what information displays on a featured listing (i.e. address, contact information, etc)

For example, in the screenshot below, featured listings are used to highlight the eco-friendly members with a customized text, icon, and unique background color:

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Sponsored Listings Pop Listings to The Top

Looking to bump a member to the top when a specific keyword is used as a search term? Sponsored listings are what you need!

With Membee’s directory, you can identify the top-used keywords and sell it to members as an add-on. Members with a sponsored keyword will display at the top of the search results when visitors use the same keyword.

You can tailor the sponsor listing settings to your membership by:

Customizing the “Sponsored” text
Customizing the icon that indicates a sponsored listing

Sponsored Listings have access to the same customization level as layouts. A sponsored listing is created automatically when you apply sponsored keywords to listings. Some customizations include:

Override the background color for sponsored listings to visually stand out more
Update the map pin color for sponsored listings
Customize what information displays on a sponsored listing (i.e. address, contact information, etc)

For example, when searching for “bank”, the sponsored listing, National Bank, displays at the very top of the search results as seen below:

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Advanced Styling At Your Fingertips – Override Anything!

Membee provides the most common styling options for you to use right at your fingertips. These styling options make it easy to use for the everyday user, but advanced styling always allows your web developer to utilize their styling expertise!

You can always take a step further and customize the design in each layout to visually differentiate different membership levels.

Tying it back to the Featured Listings, below, I have overridden the design to customize the background color and the font color for ONLY featured listings.