How I’d Build a Directory Website as a Complete Beginner (2025) Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 So in today's video, I'm going to be walking you through the step by step process that I would follow to build a directory as a complete beginner. I'm going to specifically help you get started if you have never ever used any no code tools before or any other types of tools for that matter to help you start building momentum for your directory. This is a process that I and many other people have followed plenty of times to get the ideas off the ground as non-developers and it is something that you can start actioning

00:25 today. Let's get into it. Friends what's going on? Welcome back to the channel. So today's video is going to be one that has been requested quite a bit but more privately than in the comment section. I get a lot of people who watch my videos and who reach out to me and want to know you know what specific tips I have for getting started and the truth of the matter is if you think about the time that we're living in we've got chat chippy tea, we've got YouTube videos on pretty much every single niche and despite all of

00:55 that it's still so hard to just get the first version of whatever you're trying to do off the ground and I've been thinking about you know why is that and the reason why that is is not that we don't have enough information at our disposal it's that we have too much information at our disposal and what too much information leads to is over analysis and so ultimately we end up in this cycle where we watch a YouTube video on this or we basically read a case study on there and it creates this cycle of needing more

01:25 information in order for us to get started and really the cure to all of this is momentum and momentum just simply comes from taking action no matter how small the action is and so the process that I'm going to be walking you through today is the process that I follow whenever I am either like trying to build a new business or learn a new tool and it just allows me to get a quick win on the board and lean to basically build on those wins over time and before you know it you've got an entire directory up and running now

01:59 before I get into it you know this wouldn't be a proper YouTube video if I didn't first sell the dream so here's a quick little overview of you know the directory that we're going to be working on shouldn't be here but it's still here but my course the local directory playbook is now live you can sign up if you watch this video you find it interesting and you feel like you just need some more in-depth stuff this is basically what it's about I'll just go and have a look through you know the course overview where I kind

02:25 of break down what the individual things are that I cover I basically go deep into how to build directories with no code tools if you are someone that is kind of interested in learning all this kind of stuff I basically set it up so that if you are starting at zero and you just want to build something then this will help you get going okay sales pitch over what we're going to be doing is really breaking down an entire directory at a high level what it is that needs to be done and then we're going to think about what

02:55 are the step-by-step actions that we can take in order to build momentum as fast as possible I've got a lot of fun examples if there are questions definitely let me know in the comments down below other than that let's get into it okay so the first tip is for anyone who has been doing a lot of research into you know what tools they should use into their directory and how it should potentially be set up stop no more researching now it's actually time to start doing things and the best way to get started is just by

03:27 building out a very basic version of your directory in something like ear table or notion now why is doing this so important for a few reasons and number one it's actually quite practical for the building of your directory because by building out a directory in notion you're actually going ahead and you're going to start collecting information that you can then later on use in your full directory build number two you can actually make your notion directories look incredibly nice by using gallery views table views tags

03:54 all those types of things so before you even fully commit to building your directory you can actually get it out there and start getting feedback from people and then finally is just a really great way for you to start get a win on the board and that is really what you need the key to taking this type of action is that it will allow you to build momentum that will then ultimately feed into all of the other steps that are to come when it comes to getting your directory off the ground now if you want a practical example

04:28 of someone who did exactly this for their directory let me show you no code supply code now you may have watched my one-on-one chat with Cory that I did on this channel a few weeks ago and one of the things that stood out to me is before no code supply code became the absolute killer looking directory that it is today it actually started off as a notion library or a notion directory and I remember those days because uh his notion directory with all of his code snippets was being shared on twitter it was being shared in

04:59 linkedin and was just really incredibly popular in the community and so using that as a starting point allowed him to get it out there and to get feedback from people and that ultimately led to the actual building of something like no code supply code now if you're wondering hey what does this actually look like here is what Cory shared with me he kindly actually sent me a link to his now not available notion directory with all of the different resources that he was curating before he started no code supply code so you

05:28 can see in here we've got all of these no code resources like tips and apps that you might want to use and he applied a whole bunch of tags you know the different types that there are you can apply your own filters and he also did this for you know made and webflow sites so he just went in here found a whole bunch of websites that were created in webflow added all of the relevant information that you needed and then you can really make it look nice and good by you know creating you know the list view of it or in this

05:59 case even the gallery view of this and as soon as you get it to this stage and you really don't need to have a lot of listings in order for this to be incredibly useful you can actually just start sharing it with people and that is really what will allow you to start getting feedback from people and it's really what will allow you to start building momentum now as soon as you have your notion directory all up and running you've got an idea of you know the kind of information you're collecting and people aren't giving

06:23 you good feedback around what it is that you're doing then it's actually time to start using more specialized tools to build out our directory now the tools that i dive into are webflow, ear table, walesync, make.com and a few other ones and the main reason why i choose those tools is because they are visual tools so you can see in real time what it is that you're building and i have found that especially compared to coding tools or some of the more complex tools it's a lot easier to get the hang of if you are a

06:53 complete beginner now in order to get the hang of all these different tools you are going to need to have an approach that will work for you as someone that has never built this before and so typically what i like to do is start off simple and then build into more complex stuff over time one of the simplest ways to learn how to build your website and webflow is just by starting out to build out the landing page for your directory now this here is useful because as soon as you start building out the landing page for

07:22 your directory you'll one learn how webflow works and two you'll be able to you know articulate what your directory is about a lot better now this part here does not have to be complicated it is very straightforward all you're really doing is you're creating this page here you'll create you know basically a preview of you know the types of listings that will be available in your directory you'll create a nav bar you'll create a footer you might create you know like a featured section and this is really all you need to

07:54 do in order to get started now even if you are a complete beginner i am convinced with the different tools that are out there right now you could get something like this up and running in two to three hours and if you can build this one page then you'll also be able to build additional pages and so typically what i also recommend doing is to then starting to create the about page where you can basically share your story and your mission for your directory and then also uh basically add a way for people to submit

08:22 listings to your directory in case they find your page and so all up all you really need to do in order to get started is to build two to three static pages in webflow for your directory now as soon as you get to the point where your webflow landing page and your about page is up and running you have really in my opinion done the hardest part you will still need to learn some additional tools and the tools that you're going to need to learn next are ear table and make.com but you can actually learn how those tools work

08:48 by doing the next part in your directory builder is incredibly important which is to do high quality market research now when um market research is mentioned people oftentimes think this is the part that can be skipped uh which can be uh however if you skip it you might end up building something that no one wants no one needs and people can't discover so this is typically the part where i'm saying like this is where you want to dive in understand how database tools work understand how automation works and while you are

09:20 doing it also do keyword research and do a competitor analysis now there are two main things here now the first thing that we want to do is we want to figure out if someone is looking for our directory hypothetically what are the kind of key terms that they would put into google that would lead to our directory ideally then we want to figure out how many people search for it you know um does it fluctuate throughout the year and then we also want to figure out what are those keywords that are the best for us to target

09:47 with our directory build and who else is competing for it so what we also want to do as part of our market research is to do our competitor audit and analysis now typically what i do is i just do all of my keyword research inside of my ear table database now i have an in-depth video on this on this channel i'd highly recommend checking it out if you want to you know get the hang of ear table get the hang of automation and it will really give you also a good strategy in terms of how you can kind of figure out how you

10:15 should be targeting different people but basically what we're doing is we're using tools like google keyword planner to basically get an idea of what it is that people are searching for then we get information into our research database in ear table and you'll have to kind of configure your own little fields that you want to work with and then what we do is from our list of in this case you know thousands of keywords we really want to identify the top keywords that we want to go after and so again check out the video

10:44 if you want a more in-depth explanation as to how we pick what those target keywords are but as soon as we've kind of figured out you know what those keywords are what we can do is we can actually develop a strategy around how we need to structure our directory in order for us to actually attract the right type of traffic now what will happen is with all these keywords there will be people that will also be creating content and resources for those exact target keywords and so what you want to do before you commit to

11:13 the full build is actually figure out who those competitors are and so what I've done here is I've got kind of got a list with all of the main competitors that are ranking for my target keywords and then I have a whole separate table where I break down each of my competitors in even more detail so you can kind of see here I kind of did like a little bit of a breakdown kind of explains who the business is kind of understands what they do well all those kind of things and all that information will allow me to then be

11:41 more strategic in how I approach building out my directory so there are really two birds that you're killing here with one stone one you're actually doing high quality research that will really set some really good foundation for the actual build of your directory but then you're also learning how to use tools like air table you'll also be learning how to you know set up logic and workflows that automate large parts of this process and tools like make.com and that is really what you'll need to understand in order to

12:06 then start building out the MVP for your directory okay so step four is to build out your MVP now what is your MVP your MVP is basically the first ever version of your directory and really what you want to optimize for here is speed not quality one of the things that I see is a huge trap stumbling block for a lot of people is they try to make the first version of their website of their directory you know the end-all be-all and whilst it is important to ensure that you have a certain degree of quality the most important

12:42 thing that you're optimizing for here is speed and so what you want to make sure of is that you're keeping things super simple and only focusing on the most essential parts of your build that will allow you to add value to potential website visitors now there are two key things that we're going to need to do here one we're going to have to set up our pillar page which is our overview page our all listings page and our detail page now if we go and have a look on our website to kind of see hey what is it that or how does

13:08 a pillar page look like it's basically this page here so it basically is a collection of all of the listings in a specific category now in certain instances you might have multiple different listing types so in my cases I have running races and then here I have run clubs every single listing type will have its own pillar page and then within each of those pages you're going to have your individual listings listed that will then lead to your listings detail page now I do want to say that I'm on to the second iteration

13:45 of this page here so there are still you know it's definitely an improved version of what it was before but you know there's still heaps of things that need to be fixed and need to be improved on but the way that you want to approach this is really just focus on the essentials first and then just know that because you are in control of the build that you can actually iterate it on it over time so all we really want to do is we want to jump into our webflow project and we want to go ahead and we want to start by

14:12 creating our pillar page and really all you're going to need for that first iteration is just like a header section then we also just need to then connect our individual listings and then once we have all of that we will be in a position where we can then create template pages that we can then dynamically populate with information inside of our webflow database now the webflow database is called the webflow cms and I want to quickly show you how it works basically every single time you create a collection you are

14:43 creating a template page that you can then dynamically populate with information so in this particular case I've created a collection for my race series and so if I then go in here and I search for something like uh I don't know let's go pick this event here then what I'm able to do I'm actually able to populate all of these individual fields with data that I can then map back to these individual pages and not just can I map it back to those individual pages I can then also use information that sits inside of there to

15:19 create my preview cards that then ultimately lead to that page and so really what you end up with is this page here where you can drive people to where they'll get an overview of all of the different listings that are available on your site and if you want to be extra fancy yes you can also add things like search and filtering in there and then what you want to do is just allow them to navigate to your listing detail page and this is really where the key conversion happens and so what people will be able to do is for

15:45 example click on the register now button or if it's for example airbnb book a stay if it's a talent directory you know fill out a contact form but this is ultimately where you'll start adding value to the businesses who you are listing on your site now the next part to all of this is going to then be to populate your database with information so it creates all of these individual listing pages that will then start ranking in google now this is where ear table comes back into play and so what we want to do is we want to

16:18 create a basically a database version of what we're going to be sending to the webflow cms and so here you can see I've got a little bit of a preview of say a listing in here and then what we want to do is make sure that once our information is populated inside of our ear table database that that information syncs directly to our webflow cms so that we don't need to manually add that information inside of webflow now the tool that I use in order to make this happen is a tool called whale sync I talk about them tons on

16:48 the channel because they are hands down one of the best automation tools to use when it comes to two-way syncing I have made tons of videos on how to build listing pages and listing detail pages so I'd recommend checking that out and if you're interested in learning more about it you know just go and check out whale sync it is really a tool where you can't go wrong but now one of the challenges that you're going to face is okay how do we actually get information about all of the different listings into our ear table

17:19 database in the first place and that is where we move on to the fifth step now the fifth step is all about finding data enriching data and then populating our database with information now one of the things that you want to avoid doing from the first moment where you start doing this is to start over automating things this is something that I see a lot of people do and all it leads to is massive confusion and that then basically holds momentum and then you end up you know just spending heaps of time researching a

17:48 gazillion different ways to do things without actually doing it so what I actually recommend doing first is actually going through this process manually first and that actually springs me right back to the first step which is why it's a good idea to build this inside of notion first when you're doing this in notion you'll have no choice but to find all this stuff manually and as soon as you start finding it manually you actually have a really good understanding of where the businesses or people that you want to listen

18:15 your directory actually have the information so you'll be able to find out is it inside of ear table is it sorry inside of instagram is it on google my business and as soon as you get a good understanding of where all this information already sits you can actually set up workflows that will then allow you to automate the process of collecting data and sinking it in to webflow so what exactly is it that we do here they're really like I said three key steps the first thing is to set up workflows that will allow us to

18:41 find large amounts of data related to our directory so that can be in my particular case finding you know running races or run clubs to add then we're going to run enrichment workflows where we then basically do a deep dive into one of the listings that we found and then finally we also run a workflow that basically cleans and formats our data so that before we send it to the webflow cms it formats in a way that works nicely with our directory setup that can mean for example formatting links it can mean you know adding

19:16 certain types of tags it can be you know adding a dense that type of information and so if you combine those three steps you can actually automate large chunks of this now I've got again an in-depth video on this on this channel so if you want to learn more about it I'm going to link to the video where I walk you through this step by step but really what we're going to be doing here is we're just going to be setting up workflows that serve certain types of purposes so for example here I've got a workflow that basically

19:43 goes and finds running races in different locations I also have a workflow that basically retrieves information from people's instagram accounts and so really despite the fact that it starts as a manual process a lot of the things that you can do here are actually are highly automatable and that's what will ultimately allow you to have thousands and thousands of listings in your directory now that brings me to step number six and this is really the final part in the build of your mvp and that is to add cms specific

20:13 pillar pages now just for simplicity purposes I call this seo pages here but basically what you want to do is you want to create a bunch of sub pillar pages that target specific types of keywords now once you go and do your research into what it is that people are searching for you're actually going to realize that a whole bunch of people search for very specific terms so for example they'll search for things like 10k running races near me or 10k run toronto or 5k run toronto or you'll also have you know marathons near

20:53 me those types of things and what we want to do is we want to create a resource for people searching for that specific term that in google's eyes is the most useful resource that is out there and the way that we can do that is by using the webflow cms to create all of these category or location specific pages so if we go and have a look at what this looks like in real life we've got the running directory that has a page dedicated to only running races in montreal so that way we've got you know it all pre-filtered for

21:26 that specific search term we also have running races that are filtered by for example the type of race it is so if someone clicks on marathon it will take you to a page that has all of the marathons that are happening near them right now and you can really take this to the nth degree but really the point of all this is that when then someone comes into google and types in something like running races near me that we appear somewhat high on the actual page and so as soon as you start creating all of these individual sub

22:01 pages we're going to have a traffic source that over time accumulates so much that we one drive very specific high-end traffic to certain pages and that ultimately leads to more conversions and so if we have a bird's eye view of you know what our first version of our directory looks like we have our home page our about page and our list your business business page that i mentioned in the first part and then we have our directory set up which is going to be our pillar page which basically lists all of our different

22:35 listings of a specific type then our cms or category specific or location specific filtered cms pillar pages and that ultimately then leads to our listing detail pages where the ultimate conversion happens and if you do an incredibly good job with you know creating high quality listing detail pages then you'll end up seeing a lot more people having success on your platform and that will just make it so much easier for you to attract even more traffic and to make sales now ultimately what i wanted to do here is not to

23:10 basically tell you that you need to do all this at once but it's to give you really a step-by-step process that you can follow if you have no experience whatsoever building anything online so just to recap some of the key parts again first of all create your page in ocean create your directory in ocean so you can start collecting information kind of get the hang of how databases work and how you build front ends step number two get the hang of webflow build out the landing page for your directory build the about page

23:35 for your directory and the list your business or you know profile page in your directory learn how ear table and make.com works by learning you know by doing your customer research by doing your keyword research that type of stuff and then build the mvp for your directory keep it super simple learn how to build your pillar pages and your detail pages then tie it into your ear table setup with your database and then set up workflows for collecting and automating data there are videos on all of this so a lack of

24:03 information is not going to be the issue now if you are then at the point where you've then created all of those pages then it's just a matter of setting up the cms pillar pages which are basically filtered pillar pages where you can rank four specific terms like 5k running races in ottawa whatever it is that your directory does and with this as soon as you hit the publish button you'll start to see that your site indexes in google and you'll slowly but surely start attracting traffic now this is it now the option that

24:38 you have now is to really go out do even more research into this and figure out how you can do certain types of setups or you can do what matt uh someone who just recently joined the local directory playbook did when he was in your position which is to actually just stop learning stuff and start doing stuff and so what matt did is he built a directory called tattoo friendly onsen now i want to stress that matt had no experience in building anything online prior to starting to work on this and now within 29 days he went

25:10 from knowing nothing about webflow airtable make all those kind of things to publishing the first version of his directory he's already generating traffic it's really just like the starting point for him but this here should kind of show you that really the key to success here is not more information the key to success here is action and so you know this is what you could achieve in 30 days if you actually just heads down and just do through do the work go through the individual steps and once it's out there then the

25:48 part where you start to monetize and promote your site becomes so much easier you'll be able to start reaching out to different businesses basically tell them about your site you'll be able to introduce you know certain types of business models like premium listings you'll be able to do a whole bunch of different things but really everything that you will lead to that point is just built on taking one step at a time so again just to reiterate because it's important if you are you know just in this paralysis analysis of

26:17 what tools should i use just build your notion directory today it's free to use allows you to get started immediately once you have that create a webflow account use my affiliate links in the description down below and just learn the basics of webflow by building out the landing page for your directory and then creating the about page and the list your business page this is something that you'll be able to figure out in an hour or two then do market research and while you're doing your market research get the hang of

26:49 how ear table works get the hang of how automation works this is another thing that might take you maybe three to four days to really take to the next level then start building out your mvp keep your mvp simple just focus on creating your pillar page your overview page then create your listing detail page so that you kind of understand what information needs to be displayed then start working with setting up data collection workflows and then finally add your detail pillar pages and smash that publish button those are

27:18 the moving blocks that will allow you to go from knowing nothing about building sites to having a published directory and as soon as that directory is live all good things are to follow okay i'm gonna leave it at that i'm gonna leave a link to all the videos that dive deeper into these individual topics down below if there are any questions about it please do let me know other than that i'll see you in the next video bye you you you you you you you you .