It's true... interracial dating sites need a serious facelift. After well over a decade of mainstream popularity it's time for the online dating industry, in general, to really address some of the major problems that are restricting growth. However, the interracial dating segment definitely needs to make some significant improvements. This market tends to focus solely on the "niche" aspect of interracial dating and doesn't invest in the right business model or technology to truly enhance the user's experience.
Let's examine the common consumer gripes from this community and discuss how interracial dating sites can reinvent themselves.
1. First of all, what has to be the most common complaint of all is that people post old pics, no pics or fake pics altogether. How annoying is it that? Nobody wants to visit a site and see a bunch of profiles with no pics. It discredits the site and makes the member feel like they're wasting their precious time.
The fix: Dating sites should require their members to post a picture in order to even create a profile. Giving them the option of uploading a picture after the profile has been created is too late in the process. If the member doesn't feel like scouring their hard drive to find pics after filling out the profile or, even worse, they intend to dupe others by not posting a pic at all and playing the "like me for me" game then it's too late once they've been given the ability to get into the database. Unless you're indicate in your Terms that you'll delete profiles without pics. Still, preventing the problem upfront seems like the best way to go.
2. The site never takes down old profiles to boost their population of potential matches.
The fix: Automatically take down all profiles that are over 1 year old and non-active. If someone hasn't been an active member (accessed the site more than once) in a one-year period they are probably not interested in continuing membership and shouldn't be included in search results so that serious members can save time and effort.
3. Sites don't live up to the hype of being able to match people and the process is too long and cumbersome.
The fix: Stop trying to market some magical match-making process that's driven by non-human algorithms and, instead, offer better tools for members to communicate with each other. Help them to establish dialogue on the site instead of giving them laborious quizzes to take. Members don't want you to limit their choices for them with some mysterious science but they do want help in weeding out the pool of potentials themselves.
4. Profiles are too hard to fill out and also too vague. People are forced into blanket categories or pre-established boxes to describe themselves.
The fix: Less boxes to check and more text fields. Give members the ability to create the kind of profile they want. Rather than presenting everyone with automatic disqualifiers why not leave that up to human interaction.
5. People who don't meet desired criteria can still initiate contact. (This is a really big problem with interracial dating sites.)
The fix: People who join interracial dating sites usually have a preference so give members the ability to create their own filters. Members should be able to set up their own filters to designate who they would like to receive communication from (to include groups of people or individuals).
6. Dating sites are not interactive.
The fix: Quite simply, it's time for online dating to mature and stop being such a closed environment. There's still a way to make a profit while giving members the ability to communicate more with each other rather than less. Create a real community that fosters friendship as well as romance and you'll have repeat customers instead of the one-monthers who strategically time their exodus on their smartphone calendars to avoid being autobilled for the next month.
By instituting some of these things the interracial dating site can reinvent itself, along with the rest of the online dating world, and become #1 source of new couples and marriages in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment