We are glad to present another great feature – showing ads from nearby locations that we added to our free Multifield/Location Filter Plugin. It allows you to display listings not only from the city selected by a user but also from the suburbs and nearby areas. The feature is especially useful for classified sites that launched recently and cannot boast of a number of listings in large cities and other locations.
The release of the new feature is aimed at enhancing the Plugin basic functionality – filtering listings and user accounts on site pages by a location selected by the user or identified by a user IP. The new feature is intended to boost the basic functionality of the Plugin and make it more flexible by displaying listings from suburbs and nearby areas within a particular radius.
About the feature
As we have already mentioned above, you may use the new feature in order to create the illusion of a busy site with a lot of listings to offer. That means that the user, who lands on your site in search of ads from a certain location, can leave it being disappointed by the small number of listings. However, if he is presented with a greater number of listings from the selected location and its nearby areas, rather than with a few listings from a selected location, the user is likely to stay on the site and browse through the listings offered to him.
Conversely, if the user is looking for listings in the suburbs of a large metropolitan area, for example, San Francisco or London, he may find it helpful to get a list of ads in the suburbs or next to his place of residence. Therefore, the user will be more satisfied with the website, which, in its turn, will contribute to a lower bounce rate.
If you have a busy website this feature can be really useful as it allows you to create additional diversity and expand both the search radius and the price range. For instance, if a user is looking for an apartment in a city but has a limited budget, this option will offer him more options to choose from adjacent areas, where apartments are less expensive. In this case, the user will not have to select smaller cities around the location of his interest because the Plugin will automatically display listings from the corresponding nearby areas and cities.
Back end
The new feature was added to the Plugin manager in the form of two settings displayed in the Basic Settings of the Geo Filter: Show nearby listings and Nearby listings radius.
The settings allow you to activate the feature and select the nearby listings radius. By default, the radius is set to 90 miles (150 km), but you may always increase the radius if you want to show more listings to users.
Front end
Once you enable the feature from the back end, the Plugin will show listings from nearby locations in the front end after the most relevant ads offered to the user.
Therefore, the new feature of the Multifield/Location Filter Plugin will become a useful addition to the other features offered by the Plugin and help you create a diversity of listings even in cases when the number of listings at a certain location is limited.