"Even dating has its difficulties"
Written: Apr 22 '08
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Seriously! Is that a screen any online business should ever really plan on displaying?? If you are a social networking site, should you?? If you actually get PAID to put people in contact with each other, should you be "legally" allowed to EVER display that page to your customers? EVER?!? I don't think so.
If I sound mild to majorly annoyed to you, then I guess I got the tone of the above statement just right. My qualification to make said statement is a recent three month stint on Match.com. No worries, I am not going to bore you with any dating stories (awww ;-(). You can read about the advantages or disadvantages of online dating in plenty of places, so you don't need me for that. Then what am I here to tell you?
This is the age of the internet, right? I mean there is a creative solution/program for almost anything you want to do online out there. If you can think of it, you can hire someone to create it... May need a "bit" if not a substantial chunk of cash to do so, but still. So, I wonder, why Match takes the approach of "Don't fix it if it ain't broke" in its business model. We pay cash and they get to rake it in by the bucket (yeah, hush, I'm exaggerating, I know!). And yet they manage to make the process of meeting other people almost painful for the user. And they get to withhold personalized customer service. Sounds like a bad relationship, doesn't it?
So, Match, I beg you for the following:
• If I do a search while not logged in and would like to click on a profile, would just let me log in and then direct me to the profile I want to look at? Making me start my search from scratch after logging in is extremely frustrating!
• If I receive a wink and want to say "No, thanks", could you actually make this part work and not give me the error message in the intro?? It's a great concept, but only if it works!!
• If I – or actually anyone who has the Match IM turned on – log out of your service, would you please display me as offline, and not keep me showing online for another 15 minutes or so to boost your page stats?? People don't really appreciate that I look online and yet I appear to ignore them…. I wonder why?
• If I want to see whether someone on my connections page is online for a quick IM chat, why do I have to click on their profile and add to their viewing count? Can't you just display their online status directly with their screen name and picture?? Is that so hard? Or maybe have the IM button there instead?
• Would it be possible for you to NOT mess up the Instant Messaging? I had one conversation overlaid with the text of a second conversation. If I had indeed been flirting on two fronts instead of talking about landscaping and kids that could have been a killer for a budding romance... Really not along your line of business!
• While we are on the IM, if someone wants to chat with me, could you give me more than a 3 second alert at the top of the screen, where I might not see it, because I am at the bottom of said screen, checking out who checked me out?!?!?! How many missed connections can be laid at the door of that interface oversight??
• On to Customer Service... though I only attempted to use their services once. I tried to tell them that their servers were out of sync, because my "whose viewed me" numbers would flip backwards when going back and forth between miscellaneous screens. (And so do the actual listings of the folks who look at me, my profile, or my garden pics). Instead of a "Thank you" I got a canned response back saying that there might be something "wrong" with my security settings. I am going to suppress the sarcastic comments that this incident caused. They would have been good though. And said with a smile. Grin
I am sure there is more, and I just can't think of it. I'll tack it on later, when indeed I do remember. But just to help you out Match, here are some ideas that could so totally put you in a dating league of your own...
Professional pictures: subcontract with local photographers to offer good profile shots for people like me, who are usually behind instead of in front of the camera. Or those of us who are too embarrassed to ask our friends or, shudder, our kids to take pictures.
Local meets: Why not give all these local folks a chance to meet up in person? You've got the clout to pull this off all over the US, you've got our subscription locked in already, and now you get people to do the most important thing – meet face-to-face. At the very least you could have an online place where people can organize such meets on their own.
And this is where the tongue in check suggestions start!
Etiquette classes: For those folks who are just to chicken to respond with "I am really not that interested". Can that be that hard?
Psychology referral services: For those folks who just don't get "I am really not interested"...
Links to Athletic clubs - for obvious reasons.
Links to Nick Arosio from "What not to wear" - for obvious reasons.
But, really, I think you need to enter into a partnership with Harley-Davidson - for obvious reasons....
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Member: Megan
Location: Cedarburg, WI
Reviews written: 31
Trusted by: 50 members
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