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Previous post: Marketing a Dating Site is More Expensive Than you Think
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A great news hit for Match, and for the industry. Is business still up now? from what I hear its level YOY. Its time to pull some numbers from the Competitive Intell companies and see how things are going now, after Valentines.
I got a few thousand extra signups with my 5 second bit in there.
Match and POF are the bellwethers of the industry. Let’s make sure to compare apples to apples when it comes to traffic. Just because a company spends more money on advertising doesn’t mean the market is growing.
I’m not a fan of the online competitor analysis companies like Hitwise or Compete, traffic really doesn’t equal revenue or – more importantly – profit.
From what I’ve seen of the main players, I suspect margins are being squeezed to maintain market share – most of the online dating companies are having to work harder to generate the same amount of profit.
On the plus side, with the general downturn in online advertising, our partners are finding it a lot cheaper to acquire members now than 12 months ago.
Do people believe that perhaps our industry may now feel the affects of the recession?
Ross
People care about the number of relevant people in their immediate area. Nothing else really matters. Traffic tells a *lot* about a company.
In the US we already feel it and everyone says they are growing. Wait another month or two I think traffic will drop off.
Traffic tells a *lot* about a website – not necessarily a business. Sorry to harp on about this, but it’s a pet peeve – getting traffic isn’t difficult, getting profitable traffic for a business is difficult.
One of partners got to the top of Hitwise for a day by spending about a few hundred quid on a huge amount of pop-under traffic – we’ve seen other people get top 5-10 rankings for weeks and even months using similar tactics.
Marketing departments or agencies are often measured on visitors and traffic – not bottom line profit – which encourages some people to focus on traffic growth, or even revenue growth, rather than profit growth.
I wish there was an industry measurement of revenues at the very least – that would paint a very different picture to that shown by traffic measurement companies.
You are singing to the choir, I agree about the lack of useful industry metrics. Markus talks about number of emails sent daily, I like that a lot.
Traffic spikes based on ad buys over time as a trend is useful when viewed with engagement metrics and perhaps # emails sent.
If I belong to a website I want to be able to talk to everyone. Can’t say you have 15 million profiles but can only talk to 1.4 million of them.
As a company focused on relevant people in the area. I think there needs to be a mind-shift to ARPE Average Revenue Per Engagement instead of blind traffic. This would allow us to understand what engagements really matter.
I propose a “no brainer” there is greater value in 1 to 1 interaction…it marks conversion, high CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index), and viral growth possibilities. The amount of interaction across Skout for 1 to 1 versus a silo’d “1 to self interaction” is extremely high. However our 1 to Self page views etc. look more modest.
I think we can all agree in dating as in the real world a 1 to 1 interaction has a substantially higher value to an end user than a 1 to self……
Per engagement seems to granular, what about per user per month?
Redg, you’re talking about the value of Skout more than how to measure success.
I don’t see how 1 to 1 interaction automatically leads to higher customer satisfaction and viral growth is not really a metric consumers care about. This is what happens when we focus on business metrics and not what’s important to users. I think the metrics should cover both constituencies.
1 to self, lol I’m not going to touch that one.
Dave,
2 Things I can’t resist.
1. Talking about the value of Skout
2. Tongue in Cheek references… :)
MRPU? I think could be valuable very valuable as well.
However granularity is important when focusing on consumer satisfaction.
“See what our customers do. Make it easier and better for them to do “that”….Seems simple.”
I understand all of us in the dating industry are serious about having satisfied customers…However unless we see relevant ROI based on “engagement” numbers it is very unlikely that we will be motivated to enhance the features that our users value the most.
I respectfully disagree about costumers not caring about value growth…as a business term absolutely not. However from a WOM perspective Viral Growth happens from happy customers. I believe viral growth to go hand in hand with satisfied customer interaction and to go hand-in-hand with our new media interconnected social world.
For example…I meet cute girl on Skout…I have a good chat conversation…I tell my friends….Friends get on Skout = Viral Growth
or
I am playing with the Skout OUT at a bar. I grab my friends and they participate with me on my selection process. My friends see me having fun and are then naturally going to get involved and begin engaging in Skout. = Viral growth
To the 1 to 1 interaction = customer satisfaction.
True 1 to 1 interaction I believe to be the basic goal of all online dating sites. “Automatically” 1 to 1 could not work if in the instance I am looking for something other than what my “co-interactor” is offering. However, in that case I would then not respond so the 1 to 1 is really a 1 to self.
I would be more interested if Markus, and others would define success not in emails sent but rather emails responded to. That is a valuable metric, and rightly symbolizes the 1 to 1 interaction I am talking about. Otherwise we are all just in a 1 to self minded business community, and 1 to self = an unhappy online dating customer….I’m just saying
Customers want access to lots of relevant people nearby. The Viral-ness of an app is more of a business metric. You are correct about it’s value as an indicator of how much people like an app though. But nobody looks at viral stats when they choose a service. As you state, they hear about it from friends or more importantly, friend’s lifestreams. I think we can agree that if they don’t recommend it it’s probably not very good.
MRPU = Monthly Revenue Per User, correct?
Great point re: # emails responded to. Let’s keep going with this. I’ve suffered through several false-starts over the years talking about this here, just sayin’.
And I thought the most important metric was relationships generated….
Maybe as a percentage of users That number is low but it should grow over the years. Difficult to monitor and unless you have the resources to follow up like eHarmony. Their statement that they are responsible for 2% of all marriages is brilliant, clear and easy to understand. Agree or disagree with their testing model, they refine it and follow up with members which is something the majority of dating sites simply are not capable of doing.
@markus ….great deflection…. “emails responded to” is one of the few metrics that we can ALL quantify…it would be a great start at understanding ARG (actual relationships generated) if we care… Skout is focused like Pirates on getting as much ARG across our network as possible.
“Emails sent” is…to repeat myself a “1 to self” metric and to lock into that as a baseline of success is Quixotic in the least, great for PR at best, and in all instances just a practice of self indulgence…I’m just sayin thats all..
I go to school online to the phoenix of arizona, i am taking a class on relationships and sex. One of the questions is: What precautions is Match.com taking when assesing people.? HELP!!
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