Running A Dating Site – First Impressions

The online dating industry is bigger than you think and more lucrative than you imagine. Naturally, this means that it is also very competitive. The big players invest a lot to get the most out of it. Anything that can help put your business a little ahead of the next online dating site is therefore a valuable commodity. In this article, I want to tell you about some small changes that you can easily make and that can have a significant effect on your online dating business.

You know that idiom “the devil is in the details”? It means that the little things in the plans or schemes that can be overlooked could cause you bigger problems later on. Now, I’m not one to get caught up in details or death by planning; the big picture is always the best vantage point, but we need to have a good quality canvas on which to paint our big picture. Alternatively, think of it as a kind of feng shui stuff.

Doing these little things right gives the visitor a conscious and/or subconscious perception of you and your website. Very often, something visual just doesn’t flow right, is out of place, or there’s a feeling that something isn’t quite right. You’ve probably had this feeling about the sites you’ve visited. Perhaps it has been more obvious; it finds dodging pop-ups and sneaky ad placement an assault on its intelligence, and it’s gone quickly. The site owner seems to be more interested in you clicking on an ad than in providing you with quality content. Short term thinking, poor quality site.

spelling and grammar

Two of the things that can put people off when visiting a website are English spelling and grammatical errors. A simple mistake can cause the visitor to pause briefly, interrupting their thought process and stopping them from reading your carefully constructed page. More bugs, and they start to get irritated and maybe even leave the site. This is probably not the attitude of all visitors, but I am sure that it is a percentage that you would not like to lose. At the very least, if you’re looking to build your business and need all the visitors you can get, that’s an area where you need to go the extra mile, not only for your visitors, but also for the search engines, they’re not too happy either. with typographical errors.

If you’re an entrepreneur in Delhi or a webmaster in Paris offering a website in English, working with a Google translation simply won’t work if English isn’t your native language. Posting without a native speaker reviewing it is a risk; Let’s face it, this is the first thing a visitor will read about you. Fortunately, there are many ways to get your text reviewed. While by no means perfect and complete, the built-in spelling and grammar checker in your favorite app is a first step. Your favorite search engine will also find many online services that offer free and paid reviews and reviews. The time invested, and perhaps a little money as well, is an investment in your business that you really can’t afford to overlook.

To get around the need to proofread and save a few bucks, some site owners resort to plagiarism, find a good site, and just grab the copy. Do not under any circumstances take text from another website and put it on your own (unless, of course, you have permission from the owner of the site). First you WILL be discovered (there are many ways and means), and second, it is WILL end up costing you much more than a few dollars. Word will spread quickly. There goes your credibility. You will end up blacklisted and your business will suffer, potentially catastrophically.

With a plethora of free tools available, there are no excuses (other than local variation, via/through, etc., and misuse – see below) due to misspellings. English grammar is a completely different subject. Grammar is the basic structure of an expression in the English language, commonly subject-verb-object. It becomes a mountain of rules, guidelines, laws and personal opinions, very often objective and emotional. Grammarians themselves can be prone to angry arguments not far from the battlefield. So what luck for the rest of us? Well, once again, your favorite app will have some sort of grammar check built in, as well as online resources that your favorite search engine finds, both free and paid.

There are many words in the English language that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. Usually these will not be picked up by spelling and grammar checking software. Here is a selection of common words that are the most misused and seem to cause the most confusion:

There = In that place, not here. “The house is over there.”

Their = Relating to “them” and possession. “This is her house.”

They are = Contraction of them and they are. “They’re (They’re) closing shop.”

Will the sentence still make sense if you replace:

• there with here?
• your with our?
• are with them are?

If so, you are using the correct word.

Their = Possessive form of you. “Is this your house?”

Are = Contraction of you and you are. “You’re no longer (you’re no longer) in Kansas.”

Will the sentence still make sense if you replace:

• you with me?
• are you with you

If so, you are using the correct word.

And finally the classic:

Their = Possessive form of the pronoun it. “The jury reached its decision.”

It is = Contraction of is or has. “It’s going to rain. It’s been raining.”

As an absolute minimum, use a spell and grammar check tool, check, check, and double check. At the end of the day, you can’t beat a reasonably educated native English speaker to take a look at your text. Do this before you put your text online and you’ve eliminated another reason for a visitor to drop by.

dead draw

I really couldn’t think of a better title that would cover this area well enough. So by Dead Giveaway I mean things that reveal the fact that a site isn’t ready for the public, needs more effort, identifies it as a mass-produced clone site, or has an owner who doesn’t care about presenting their business.

idiom

If the site offers multiple languages, does the content actually change to the correct language and does it change all the text? Why have a language switcher if part of the page stays in English? How would you feel if the site you visited had snippets of text in French or Urdu after you had selected English?

Let’s be blunt here, if you have 50 languages ​​on your dating site, you need to have 50 different translations, taking into account cultural differences, design changes (words and phrases in German and Russian can be much longer than English, languages from the Middle East). commonly from right to left) and grammatical differences. For example in English we use the personal pronoun “You”, there are two equivalents in German: Of Y Yesand in English: You Y You. Which one has chosen and inflected the nouns appropriately? Have you had the translation reviewed by a native speaker? Unless you Really are aimed at an international audience, stick with your own language, or perhaps a common second or third language at most.

In addition to this, don’t forget that you will also need to translate your Terms and Conditions, Privacy, Help, FAQ, About, Contact pages, etc.

If you’re just starting out and on a budget, do the multilingual thing next year. Stick with the language you know for now.

Termination

Static pages on your site, eg About, Terms and Conditions, Privacy, Contact, FAQ, etc., are also an indicator of how serious an owner is about their site. “Under construction”, “Coming soon” and the like are simply not enough. If they are not complete, the site is not ready for the public. That is all.

Last week, I reviewed a site that was submitted for inclusion in our Citation Directory, and every page in the menu gave me a Error 404 – Page not found. HAS Error 404 is unacceptable on static pages. You get them from time to time due to deleted profiles etc where the profile has been indexed by a search engine but these need to be discovered and fixed as soon as possible. The Google Webmaster Tool has a feature to check for 404s, use that.

Does the site really have Terms and Conditions, Privacy, and other appropriate static pages? If yes, is there really content and does the content reflect the site in question? You’d be surprised how many sites have blank Terms and Conditions and Privacy pages, or have content but obviously refer to another website or company (is there any plagiarism?).

detailing

There are little things that attract attention sometimes. One of these is the favicon. This is the little icon that appears in the URL field of your browser. If you have a pre-built site, it comes with its own favicon. If you don’t change it, this default value will be used. Probably 90% of the websites we review have default icons. This is also an indicator of the level of interest an owner has in running a professional site. Getting a pre-built dating site is fine, but please give it your own identity.

Also common with pre-built dating sites is the main image on the home/front/landing page. Fifty identical sites, slightly different color here and there. There is simply no individuality. If you can’t afford to license an image store, go out with some friends and take some photos, kissing, hugging, alone, together, you get the idea. Be different, be unique.

Finally

I hope this has given you some ideas to improve your own site. Content is king, but attention to detail is the mark of someone who cares about what they’re doing. You’ll get more trust, more visitors and your business will have a stronger and growing foundation if you take care of the little things.