OLX Clone Script

Design principles

Unlike other popular classifieds websites, OLX operates in many countries, and therefore, there maybe some subtle differences in design; however, the core concept and structure is more or less similar in all of the websites. When creating a clone for OLX, we have studied many of OLX websites, analyzed their differences, and finally came up with an OLX classifieds clone theme, which encompasses the best approaches from all of the websites.

Home page

The structure of the main page looks similar to most classifieds sites; however, there are several distinctive features, to which we would like to draw your attention:

Compact header

If you look at the header of the OLX website, you will notice that it doesn’t have the main menu. It only has a logo, a button for adding a listing, a profile icon leading to a user profile and an icon for switching the languages. We have followed the OLX structure but also added a choice of selecting a currency and user location.

Search by keywords in categories

Below the header, you will find a search box allowing you to search by keywords, select a category within which a search will be performed as well as distance from the search location. We have practically mirrored the search box look and functionality and made it identical to OLX.

Space for banners

This is an optional section where you may place banner ads from Google AdSense or private advertisers. The main banner may be placed just below the header area. You may also place banners in other positions, for instance, below a certain number of ads, in the sidebar, footer or any other place that you wish, with the help of the banners plugin.

Section with popular categories

Below the banner space, we have placed most popular categories right before a user’s eyes. This way, a user may easily locate the desired category, click on it and proceed to viewing the ads under it.

Since we do not have the main menu in the header where all available listing types are displayed, we have added the ability to add listing types to the section with listing types and categories. As a user clicks on a listing type, he may further narrow it down to categories relating to the listing type.

You may configure the section with categories in the admin panel by setting icons for each of the listing type and categories relating to it. When a user clicks on a category, he will see a popup with all the available subcategories making browsing experience more convenient.

Main content area & footer

This is the main area of the website where you may see all of the ads. The listings span across the entire width of the theme in rows of five; as the OLX theme is fully responsive, the rows of ads will decrease depending on a user screen size and will be stacked in a column view on mobile phone screens.

We have also added an awesome hover effect on preview pictures of ads on the home page. This way, when a user places the mouse over the preview picture of the ad, other available pictures of the same ad are swapped allowing a user to see the ad pictures as well as the total number of them. By default, up to five pictures may be previewed; to view others, the user needs to navigate to a listing details page. The rotation of images happens asynchronously without any extra load on the server.

The main content area includes boxes with featured, recently added and other ads. As the user scrolls down, there is a “load more” button to fetch more ads to the page.

Helpful information

Just below the main content, we have placed two sections where you may place the information that you want your users to focus on. These sections are good for placing an about us info box and/or latest tweets/reviews.

These sections are also great for SEO purposes, as you may enhance them with essential SEO keywords helping your website to be indexed better by the search engines. The sections are attached to the footer and have a different background to make them stand out.

Footer & Subscription section

The mass-mailer/subscription box is positioned above the footer and spans across the full width of the template on blue background. This way, more users will see it and subscribe to your newsletter.

The OLX clone template offers a functional footer where you may place helpful links leading to “about us” or other useful pages. You may group the links in columns and give each column a name to help a user better navigate the links. The footer is also a perfect place to position links to mobile apps (if your website offers native iOS app and Android app) and links to social media. The information that you place in the footer is configurable right from admin panel.