Dating site wishlist – your personal checklist

December 18th, 2008

Christmas is a time for making lists, so I thought I’d use this opportunity to talk about the makings of a good dating sites. Whenever I review a dating site, I look for particular features to determine how good it is. When you evaluate a site in terms of whether it’s a good place to go and spend your money (and/or your time) it’s good to have an understanding of what you can expect from a good site so you can make a more informed decision.

Here’s a checklist of things you should look out for. Good dating sites will offer you all these and more.

1. Free registration

You should be able to sign up, run a reasonably detailed search and add a profile and a picture without ever putting in your credit card details. Most sites will let you do this. This is important, as you want to know what the site is like and whether you like the looks of it (and the people who hang out there) before you shell out any money. Usually, a site that tries to make you pay before you can look at any photos isn’t worth signing up to, as it’s probably dodgy. Limiting the amount of pics you can see is pretty standard, though, as is wanting money for messaging/chatting.

There is a growing trend among the more expensive,respectable compatibility testing sites of refusing to show you photos of your matches before you pay. Parship started it and I’ve now seen it done by DatingDirect Affinity

While these sites are not actually shady or dodgy, I still find this unsuitable, as I don’t trust any matching software more than I trust my own eyes. These sites claim that doing this stops their members from pre-judging each other based on their looks and helps the matching process, so it’s up to you if you want to play (and pay) along.

2. A clear, flexible payment structure

It’s good to have options, so most good sites will give you a choice of subscription, ranging from one month (or sometimes less) to 6 months or even a year. Expect to see a discounted price per month if you take up a longer subscription.

3. Ease of use

What’s easy will depend on how Internet-savvy you are. If you’re new to the net, you’ll want a no-frills site that makes it easy to search and message people without too many weird distractions. If you’re a bit of a veteran, this might be less of an issue. The key thing here is that you like the looks of the site and understand how to use the features you want to use.

4. The essential features designed well – searching and messaging

Gimmicks aside, all you really need out of a dating site is to be able to find people and then communicate with these people. Everything else is a bonus. Extra features are handy and often useful, but I’ve seen many people happily choose a simpler site with nice people on it over feature-rich sites whose members they didn’t like so much. Make sure these basics are covered before being blinded by promises of anything else.

The search function should be detailed and should allow you to search by what’s important to you, be it ethnicity, religion, interests, etc. Messaging should be straightforward and simple to use, as well as quick. If you prefer your online chat to be done via the site and not external things such as MSN Messenger, you’ll also want a chat function, otherwise, being able to make initial contact and exchange details is more than enough.

5. Fellow members who seem like people you’d actually like to hang out with

You don’t have to want to actually date everyone you see when you run a search, but have a look and see if any of them are “your kind of people”. If enough of them are, even if you don’t fancy them, chances are you’re on the right site and hopefully someone will come along soon.

6. Good help/support, especially if you’re new

You should have someone to talk to if you need help with using the site, even if it’s by email. Many dating sites are run by small team or even just one person, so you might not be able to speak to anyone on the phone, but it’s nice to get an email or a message if you have a problem. The bigger sites have dedicated team working for them that help people with technical/payment issues. Some sites nowadays actually do date coaching too.

7. Some profile moderation

It’s good to know someone out there is looking out for you and weeding out the scammers and the freaks. Most pay sites will have a team who monitor the site and remove profiles put up by such nasties. The better sites will have these people linked to the support team, so if you have any doubts about whether someone you met online is trying to scam you, you’d be able to contact the support team and ask for advice.

Related posts:

1. The problem with online dating site reviews

Entry Filed under: Online Dating Tips