Classified sites such as Olx, Craigslist, Quikr offer several types of paid listings. The user will have to pay money to see his post at the top of the list. Why sellers pay money for premium listing? Well, the premium/paid listings have higher conversion and click-through rates. If you own a classified site that has some traffic, the business owner/seller may want to utilize the traffic to his benefit by either advertising on your site or by purchasing an addon. Although classified sites can be a good source of generating revenue, creating a search engine friendly site is not easy. This is because classified sites may have several categories and features. Several categories = several URLs. Poorly designed permalinks and invalid canonical links can cause SEO issues and features should work great to provide a good user experience.
The easiest way to launch a classified site is to use WordPress CMS, an SEO plugin, and a well designed classified theme. Free classified templates in the WordPress repository have basic features. Also, you won’t find many classified templates in the WP repository. Why is this so? Well, the developer won’t put in efforts for something that wouldn’t make him money. Instead of wasting time in finding free templates, go through the below paragraphs where I’ve shared the cheapest and the best classified themes for WordPress (priced under $50):
Best WordPress classified themes
Adifier
Adifier is the highest-rated classified theme right now. It provides 50+ features that you can use to build a top-notch classified portal without learning and writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code. Adifier supports grid, card, and list layouts. It offers 5 different header designs and a sophisticated auctioning/ad buying/invoicing system. Adifier allows users to create ads of 50+ types. If your customer/website user is interested in buying an ad, he/she can compare the ads to learn about their similarities or differences. Adifier supports many popular payment gateways and the Beaver page builder plugin. It has a messaging system built-in through which customers can chat with the sellers.
Classiera
Classiera is yet another popular classified ads WordPress theme. It has been bought by over 3000 users and has a good rating of 4.67. Classified sites are often targeted by spammers. Classiera forms are protected by the Google Recaptcha system. The template lets users import, customize, and use one of the 15+ demos designed by its developers. If you don’t like the design of the category page, you can change it in the Classiera theme. The template can display the “ad submission” form at full-width. You can also configure the template to display a sidebar on the “submit ad” page. Classiera is built using the Twitter Bootstrap Framework and it supports several payment gateways. The theme has a messaging system built-in. It also features a bidding system.
Classiads
Classiads is powered by the Visual Composer page builder plugin that provides 85+ elements. With VC, you can create great looking pages for your classified ad site without writing code. In addition to WP Bakery/Visual Composer, you’ll also get the following plugins for free:
- Layer slider, revolution slider.
- Ultimate addons.
Classiads is a WPML ready template that supports WooCommerce, BBPress, Twilio’s SMS service, mobile OTPs, etc. It allows users to log in to the classified website with their social media accounts, make the advertisements sticky, and create custom forms for contact us/login/registration pages of the site. Classiads offers 7+ header styles and several custom-built widgets. It has over 5000+ users and a nice rating of 4.53.
AdForest
AdForest is one of the best-selling classified ads WordPress themes. It has 6k+ users and a rating of 4.85 out of 5. In addition to the features you’ll find in the above templates, AdForest offers a radius search feature through which users can find classified service/item that is being sold within an X kilometer radius from their current location. The template has an option to activate social sign-in buttons on the register/login pages and includes an advanced messaging system that lets admins block certain users from sending messages.
AdForest supports OpenStreetMap and it provides a bidding system. It offers 8+ header styles and a search tool that enables users to find products by their price, location, etc. AdForest has the option to make an ad on the sidebar sticky. The developers offer a premium copy of the Visual Composer plugin to the buyers of this theme. The plugin is packed in the theme’s installer file.
Classima
Launched in October 2019, Classima is a new WordPress classified theme. Within 7 months, the developer has sold over 1100 copies of Classima. The template has an excellent rating of 4.86/5. Classima supports the Elementor page builder. It provides 18+ custom built Elementor addons. The theme lets sellers and buyers chat with each other in real-time. Like the above templates, Classima supports various payment services and ad formats. It lets users change the header style, view (from the grid to list and vice versa), etc.
Other features of the above templates:
Maps integration: The above themes support MapBox or Google maps. The maps will display the direction of the business/seller on the listing page.
Responsive design and SEO friendly: The classified themes I’ve covered in this article have a mobile-friendly design. Their ad-posting, homepage, category, listing, etc pages look great when accessed on a mobile device. The templates are search engine friendly and support all popular SEO plugins.
Advanced filters: As mentioned at the beginning of the article, classified ad sites are complex and have many categories. The filters that the templates provide will help the website visitors in finding the products as per their requirements.
Verification and custom fields: The classified ads themes lets admins mark the user profile as verified or unverified. They also allow users to create and use custom fields.
RTL languages, unlimited colors, fonts: The above templates support RTL languages and Google Fonts. They allow you to change the color of the text, blocks, etc.
