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I've been experimenting with certain ways to improve the number of users for my social dating website, and since the daily user count is so low, even the approach for any experiment is almost impossible.

I want to make a final approach to this chapter before I move on. I have the following idea:

Revamp the design back to a single "Landing Page" design, where for example a screencast, catchy video, or screenshots are displayed to "catch" the user.

The user should ideally:

  • Register
  • Create a profile
  • Upload pictures
  • Queue up for the "launch"

Almost just like an Area51 site proposal, where a certain number of people has to be reached so that the site can go live.

The problems I face are:

  • some users sign up, fill in their info, but don't upload photos / upload tree or animal photos.
  • Some users sign up, fill in their info and just leave the site, and never return

For the site to work (people to actually meet others) I need some circulating users. Would you see a chance of revival of the website using such an pre-emptive registration approach?

UPDATE:

  • For a ideal launch, what would be the correct user count for a city like Istanbul?
  • In the pre-launch era, should i email users with something, for example the progress (e.g. every %10+?)
  • Should i focus on the main, big capital Istanbul, or a couple of big capitals, like Ankara, Izmir
  • I am thinking of recording myself in an interview style, like apple for example, answering questions about the site itself or the launch.
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Hi not an answer, but I can't get past the home page in your website. Every link I click (register, about, browse) I'm always sent back to the home page (I'm using chrome 11.0) – Filippo Diotalevi Jun 11 '11 at 16:16
The server was recompiling at that stage :) now everything is in order. – Herr K Jun 12 '11 at 7:01

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

It is a tough one Herr, because in my opinion, Datings sites are very close to being a "natural monopoly" - the industry is controlled by a half dozen big players.

I like your site though, and your concept also. Just thinking out loud, have you by any chance thought of approaching one of the big coffee chains and offering a discount coupon as part of the deal? There might just be some program already in place that would be a fun "joint advertising" type of deal.

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Thank you :) Could you please extend the join advertising approach? – Herr K Jun 13 '11 at 6:14
What part should he extend? Tell you how to use google to find a possible partner or ow to use email or a phone to contact them? – NetTecture Feb 6 '12 at 19:11
up vote 1 down vote

I like the idea of single landing page. But I think you should excite atleast few 1000s of users to sign-up, create profiles and upload pictures before even you go live. The way to do that would be

  1. excite them to the core: make them feel its the next awesome thing - maybe offer incentives for being the first ones
  2. make registration, profile creation and photos super duper easy
  3. place a progress bar that will indicate how fast the site is nearing launch (like area51)
  4. make it very social (fb, twitter, newletters etc)

Dating sites have huge problem of attracting users. Do something different and unique. Read papers/books on how the successful ones got users to sign up etc. I have even heard that few sites go to an extent of creating 1000s of fake profiles to attract real folks. All the best!

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Thank you! The progress bar approach is really good :) Although the 1000 users is really true, i got about 800 users and nothing is really functioning well, the conversion rate is terrible and clearly the alarm bells are ringing :) I will design a landing page where new users will be converted and a progress bar will take it's place. – Herr K Jun 12 '11 at 16:52
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Also, target 1 or 2 cities first rather than whole world or a country. If you could sign up few thousand users from a city, boy you'll have everyones attention. Moving to other cities will be a breeze. – xoail Jun 12 '11 at 19:09
I will definitely keep that in mind. Shouldn't i start with for example, only with 4-5 big cities? Should i limit it to 1-2 cities or the biggest capital city only, for example Istanbul? – Herr K Jun 12 '11 at 20:58
Well in online dating sites you are basically trying to get local folks to hook up. So even if you have 100 users from city A and another 100 in B doesnt mean you have 200 users, but only 100 to a user from city A or B. Being a resident of city A, I'd only like to see how many users you have in my city using your site. Focusing on count of active users in one city should help you a lot. Its something what Groupon did in Chicago... and now they are everywhere. – xoail Jun 12 '11 at 21:52
Yes that is true, i am going to record myself, as a founder interview ( i have an iPhone 4 which i hope does some good video :)) and try to answer the basic questions. I will update the question now – Herr K Jun 13 '11 at 6:15

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