Are you struggling to build and manage directories for your business? Look no further than Brilliant Directories – your one-stop solution for online directory building.
Say goodbye to the headaches of manual data entry and outdated technology, and say hello to a streamlined and efficient directory system.
In this article, we’ll dive into the many benefits of Brilliant Directories and show you why it truly is the ultimate solution for directory building.
What Is Brilliant Directories?
Founded in 2009 – Brilliant Directories is a web directory software that lets you create online business directories or membership sites within minutes.
The software offers a library of turbo-charged membership themes with point-and-click customizations, allowing you to never start from scratch.
You can find pre-built directory themes for various categories, such as service providers, Local city guides, member communities, local classified ads, real estate listings, and more.
Next, Brilliant Directories offer a suite of robust features for member management, website monetization, design and branding, content publishing, and SEO to help in end-to-end directory building.
From associations to business owners, clubs, and groups – Business Directories empower over 30,000+ businesses and websites around the globe.
How Does It Help in Creating Membership Sites & Business Directories?
Brilliant Directories has an easy-to-use interface with no-code customizations and just over a thousand features that cover every aspect of building amazing website directories.
The software gives you a headstart with its library of ready-made directory templates tailored to your business needs. Next, it has a suite of SEO and content management tools to help you and your members rank better in SERPs.
For easy member management, the platform offers a self-service dashboard for members where they fill in the required details and register on your website.
Once you’ve members on board, you can let them publish content, post events, sell products or services, and more. You can also create custom membership packages with certain privileges or restrictions. And let members easily purchase and pay in their local currency.
Lastly, apart from membership subscriptions, it has tools to help you monetize your website, such as banner ads, affiliate assistance, sell leads, cross-sell options, and more.
Key Features of Brilliant Directories
So certainly, Brilliant Directories have the whole nine yards to help you create out-of-the-box website directories.
Let’s dive in and explore the key features that Brilliant Directories come with.
#1. Hassle-Free Setup and Design
Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, Brilliant Directories has the right mix of code and no-code tools, such as:
Design and Branding
A simple point-and-click design editor allows you to customize pre-built themes or create custom themes with logos, colors, images, text, and branding elements. Moreover, sites built using Brilliant Directories come with white-label at no additional cost.
Webpage Builder
From a single admin panel, you can create, edit, and manage your website. Its in-built visual web page editor lets you edit templates or create custom web pages like you’re working on MS Word. Easy-peasy!
Or, developers can use custom HTML and CSS code to further customize the look and feel of web pages.
Mobile Ready Website
Let us ask: Do you want a website that can instantly convert into a mobile app?
Brilliant Directory provides mobile-ready websites. All you need to do is, use the plug-and-play integration with popular mobile app builders and transform your website into a mobile app pretty effortlessly. The software integrates with top iOS and Android app builders like Appypie, Swiftic, and more to get your app up and running in less than 5 minutes.
Access Source Code
Even though many directory solutions offer access to frontend source code, either you get charged for it, or the customization is a hard nut to crack or both.
Irrespective of the plan you choose, Brilliant Directories offers free access to edit frontend source code. Its Show Widgets feature outlines exactly where to edit specific source code modules of your site.
Thereby letting you identify exact places in the code to edit to customize page layouts and even update CSS design. No more searching random php files!
#2. Member Management
Brilliant Directories has over 1000+ settings and features to manage your members – from self-service dashboards to individual user personas and much more. Here’s a breakdown of how the platform helps you manage visitors and members effortlessly.
Self-service Member Dashboard
Brilliant Directories allows members to set up their own accounts without your interference. Members can update their contact information, manage subscriptions, keep track of leads and reviews, upload content, and more– all from a unified dashboard.
Furthermore, you can decide what information you want from your members and add custom fields to the dashboard.
SEO Optimized Member Profile Pages
Every member on your website gets specific SEO-optimized public profiles. Your members can add information about themselves, and visitors can contact members, leave reviews, and more– everything adds up to optimize member profiles for search engines.
Reviews and Ratings
Using this feature, you can allow visitors to leave reviews and ratings on business or member profiles. Hence, make your directory website credible and user-friendly.
However, you can delegate control to your members and allow them to manage their reviews, or you can take complete control and moderate reviews on your website.
Bulk Member Importer
Directory websites are vast enough to keep adding to the list and still be half-full. Certainly, if you have gathered a list of members otherwise, you can easily import them to your website as a .csv file.
During import, you can even sort members into categories, set their membership levels, pin them to Google Maps, and include profile pictures, logos, and more.
Create Membership Packages
You can create unlimited custom membership packages (free or paid) and bill members monthly, quarterly, or annually.
Choose from over 40+ privileges and restrictions for each package to offer distinction. For example, the high-tier membership will unlock more privileges than the low-priced ones. This also helps you differentiate the benefits of each membership level.
Email Marketing
For better communication with members, the platform offers built-in email marketing tools. Using these, you can create customized email designs or choose from over 40+ pre-built templates and customize them as per your branding.
Next, you can segment email lists and run email campaigns without opening multiple tabs.
To personalize the interaction with members, you can use variables in your email templates. These variables automatically get replaced with the corresponding content – enabling your members to receive personalized emails from your website.
#3. Content Publishing
Brilliant Directories also has tools to support content creation for growing your community. It’s really easy to publish and promote content because of the following:
SEO Tools
Every section of your directory website is made to rank higher on search engines, from web pages to rich snippets and metadata to URL structure– everything comes optimized.
However, to further optimize any of these elements, you can use the site-wide SEO editor to customize the SEO structure.
Blogging Support
The platform offers a complete blogging system to support your content and SEO needs. Using the blogging tools, you can:
- Publish Articles: Built-in visual editor allows you to write, edit, optimize, and publish articles easily
- Schedule Posts: Automatically schedule posts for a future date or time
- Dedicated Section: Posts and articles have a dedicated section on your website, showcasing it as a resource for visitors and members
Event Listings
Anyone in your community, including you, can post about upcoming events and activities with details, images, ticket links, and more – all you need to do is fill up a simple form. You can even add custom buttons like ‘Ticket’ and ‘More Info’ to add external links.
To add a venue, freely integrate Google Maps into your event to add physical location. You can even allow visitors to comment on the event page and share the page link using social media widgets. Lastly, you can place an AdSense or customer banner on event posts.
Deals and Coupons
Offering great deals on your website can attract significant traffic. As a result, more businesses would like to get registered with your directory.
Here’s how Brilliant Directories help the cause:
- Share Deal: Easily create and publish deal with coupon codes, additional information, and a purchase link
- Add Timer: Set an expiration period for the deals to create a sense of urgency and help promote prompt action
- Affiliate-friendly: Allow marketing affiliates to publish affiliate links with the deals they share publicly
#4. Generate Revenue
Brilliant Directories offer a chunk of monetization tools to transform your membership website into a revenue-generating machine.
Multiple Payment Gateways and Revenue Channels
Brilliant Directories integrates with the 10 most popular payment gateways to accept and process payment in your local currency, such as Stripe, PayPal, Verifone, and PayFast. You can know more about the payment methods from here.
Next, it allows you to create several revenue channels to always have a recurring income. You can earn from membership subscriptions, banner ads, cross-selling products or services, and other ways that you can find.
Its built-in processing tools manage all your payments, including refunds, and even create buy pages for additional products.
Lead Generation Tools
The software allows you to collect, manage, and sell leads. It has everything you require to generate leads, such as forms, newsletter signups, etc. Check out this video about the basic lead package available for free.
For best results, you can purchase the automatic lead matching add-on to nurture your members with better matching leads. Simply place a purchase button with a set amount for every lead and start counting money. 🤑
Hosting and Security
Websites built using Brilliant Directories include premium cloud hosting. Thus, you save on the expensive costs of managing and securing self-hosted websites. When you create a website with Brilliant Directories, you can expect:
- 24/7 monitoring
- Daily backups and exports
- SSL Security
- Login attempt protection
- Closed-source network
- Multi-site management
Apart from the long list of features, it also has an abundance of support resources and content to troubleshoot any problems users might encounter while using the software.
Support Resources
- Quickstart Videos: Tons of video tutorials to easily glide you through the features and processes
- Search Knowledgebase: A centralized hub that has documents to answer all your question for end-to-end setup and customizations
- Dedicated Facebook Group: Has a Facebook group where you can connect and network with a community of like-minded people
- Webinar Replays: Over 120+ webinar replays are available to you at any point in time
- Private Phone Support: One-hour paid screen share phone training from Brilliant Directories senior coach to get all the consultation and support you need
- Submit Tickets: Create support tickets for every issue you face while working with the software
Brilliant Directories Alternatives
Although Brilliant Directories is an amazing software for website directory building, you might want to explore other similar options. We’ve researched and reviewed two of the best alternatives for you 👇🏻
#1. BoxedCMS
BoxedCMS is a custom directory software that helps you create digital directories for businesses, weddings, news portals, magazines, travel guides, and more.
The software uses NodeJS and AngularJS to give a stylish effect and ease of use. Plus, this makes the software easily scalable with no limit to the number of features you can add via coding.
Key Features
- Manage multiple sites with target-specific languages and territories; localize content with your preferred language
- Centralized dashboard for user management, approving member requests, and managing user registrations from under one roof
- Boost your revenues through sponsored content and banner advertisements; get paid directly by your users with the Stripe payment gateway
- Use the WYSIWYG editor to do everything and anything to publish content in the frontend
- Monitor real-time performance reports for your campaigns; integrate with Google Analytics to generate insights and stats from your website
With its enterprise plan, BoxedCMS offers complete flexibility for your team to modify the code based on business needs. Plus, you get to schedule a free demo of the software.
#2. eDirectory
eDirectory is an enterprise-grade directory software that helps you build amazing directory websites regardless of industry or purpose.
Key Features
- Create custom-designed templates with summary cards, custom fields, drag-and-drop widgets, and more using its Intuitive template editor
- Control every SEO aspect of your site with built-in SEO tools: sitemap generator, robots.txt editor, and 301 redirects editor
- Has a marketplace feature allowing members to create catalogs and sell products or services right from the directory
- Integrated app builder letting you transform your website into beautiful iOS and Android apps – no code required
- Owned license holders get automatic access to the complete eDirectory source code
Besides, you get other delightful features like creating deals and offers, publishing events, uploading blogs, and generating analytics and reports for overall website analysis.
Conclusive Thoughts
The team at Brilliant Directories has ensured that the software connects all the dots when it comes to building and managing a directory website.
It takes care of all the essential things, from website layout to optimization and member management. Besides, you can try out the software for free. Book a free demo today!
