New site for singles Single Edition looks interesting.

For singles who know there’s life beyond dating, SingleEdition.com offers a lifestyle destination that embraces the culture of single living. Most single adults, young and old alike, are living life on their own terms, carving out meaningful lives and creating their own communities without regrets. SingleEdition.com will be the first lifestyle destination for unmarried individuals that will deliver daily value to help them manage their everyday lives. Unique and insightful single living content, expert advice, tips and how-to’s on topics ranging from home, health and wellness to finance, travel and leisure distinguish SingleEdition.com from the myriad of relationship sites. The approach changes popular perceptions that single life is exclusively about dating or finding the perfect mate and dating.

The marketplace is chock-full of sites catering to singles. I don’t cover them often as there are literally hundreds and I’ve not been too excited about what I’ve seen to date. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any good sites for singles out there, just too many and it’s impossible to see which are best without slogging through the same old “experts” telling us how to live our lives.

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After receiving 50+ email alerts, I broke down and signed up for Singlesnet so I could email people and see how the system works for paid users. It’s arguably the dating site with the most traffic and I wanted to evaluate the experience and see what types of people use the site.

In short, Singlesnet has figured out a way to drive an incredible amount of traffic to a site which for the life of me that I can’t imagine anyone more serious than newbie casual daters actually using.

Let’s take a look at what’s wrong with Singlesnet.

We start with the first-of-its-kind dynamic registration process. Next, we feed your information into our sophisticated compatibility matching technology identifying traits and similarities to find your true love.

This means there is no search capability except for screen name or zip code. Based on the information gathered about members, there really isn’t much for their system to search on.

When I try to email anyone the system says my message is empty and won’t send it. It turns out the emails area actually being sent, which means people are sending multiple emails, thinking that maybe the next one will go through.

I’ve sent a dozen emails and my “Send email” remains empty.

Why is it called “My email” when the communication center contains email, flirts and “match notifications.”

Overall profile quality is low. I’d give it a 3 out of 10. They couldn’t have made it more difficult to understand what the other person wants and if you are a match.

Deleting one or more messages in the main message are displays the text “The selected message(s) have been removed, this may take a short period of time to update your inbox.” Clicking “ok” displays the profile you just deleted. Huh?

Deleting a message while reading the message is just painful, reloading the main messages window along the way.

Match clearly has the best messaging system in the business. It couldn’t be any easier to get an immediate snapshot of who you’re talking to, have added to you favorites list, has winked at you, etc. I wish more sites would learn from their design.

I’m not sure there is a user experience designer at Singlesnet. Did anyone who is not a developer ever look at the site? Looks like user testing didn’t make it into the budget.

What is a “One to one match notification?” What are we matching on? There is so little information captured in profiles, no wonder the only search option is zip code.

The Help section doesn’t come close to providing any value past logging in.

Photos display in improperly-sized pop-up windows powered by javascript. Why is there even a pop-up window? To increase pageviews?

“There are 15 members in your area that we think are interested in you.” Can they be more ambiguous? Is this different from match notifications? How does Singlesnet “think” people are interested in me? What is this assumption based on? Again, back to the paltry amount of information in profiles to base level of interest.

Someone is interested in me. “You can respond back to the user by flirting (for free) or upgrading to a featured member to send patty156 an email.” I’m a paying member, why am I seeing this and why can’t I send a message?

Finally, it appears that 100% of the emails I’ve received have been from scammers.

What Works

About the only thing that works on the site is the credit card processor. They have their priorities straight.

Summary

If my seat of the pants analysis is in any way indicative of the quality of the site, the Singlesnet motto should be, “Where singles remain single.” I’m being harsh because the company is doing such a disservice to its members. They have absolutely no idea what they are doing, instead focusing on driving a lot of traffic to the site and making as much money as they can. That’s capitalism, but it still smacks of inauthenticity and I hate to see people being taken advantage of.

The site will not rank in the top 10 for much longer, save your effort and money and join a site that works that is focused on providing a high-quality experience and members.

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Singles.com has relaunched as an objective dating site review resource. The site competes with longtime dating site review sites link edatereview (good), datingsitereviews (good) and many other not-so-good sites.

We have an internal team of experienced inhouse dating site reviewers with over 25 years of combined online dating experience. Each one of those team members does an independent review of the site in question. Once completed, the team sits down and comes up with a consensus review. In most cases, they tend to come up with the same basic review. Because each person has their own likes and dislikes, our reviewers are told to ignore the content of the site and simply look at the facts: number of members, quality of profiles, value for money, customer service quality, and an overall review of the site.

Behold the statement: “Because each person has their own likes and dislikes, our reviewers are told to ignore the content of the site.” Huh?

They say they are able to get special deals from most dating sites, is this true? Some of the prices I saw were from months ago.

As more and more dating sites launch affiliate programs, the lines between useful reviews and  poorly written affiliate marketing come-ons continues to blur.

Most sites copy content from other review sites, often with the same spelling and grammar mistakes. Worse are the sites full of stale reviews from 2004.

Singles.com is at it’s core an affiliate site. They are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, its’ all about making $20 when you sign up for a dating site after reading about it on theirs. Singles.com will get some traffic simply due to it’s name. There is absolutely nothing wrong with paid affiliate listings, I just find them on average poorly executed, stale and more of an SEO game than about helping singles make informed decisions about which dating sites to join.  As with all review sites, Caveat emptor.

The review business is woefully underserved and I’m thinking about doing something about it. I have removed the affiliate links from my sidebars and will be moving them to another page or url entirely in the near future.

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Valentine’s Day is like Tax Day for accountants. All of our hard work: marketing, programming, partnerships, acquisitions and new services, are launched and bringing in thousands of new people every day. How many happy couples did your dating site create this year?

Are your customers more satisfied with your service than they were a year ago?

What problems did you encounter this year? How did you deal with them?

What are your plans for the next 12 months?

The Dating industry high season doesn’t begin for another 9 months. Go take a vacation and come back ready to get to work. We have a lot to accomplish this year to gain back people’s trust, improve customer service, add new features, develop new marketing plans and find new ways to advertise.

Or you can choose to sit back and watch social networking take your business and empty your bank account. The ball is in your court. What are you going to do about it?

Try something new this year. Add a free or VIP tier of service. Try videochat, sign up for your competitors sites, evaluate and take a risk or two with your marketing budget, try offering a trial period (a REAL free trial, please).

You would be surprised at how easy it is to bring in a few percent more visitors every month, and converting them to paid members. Often without breaking the bank.

Subtle pitch: the first step is to perform a thorough evaluation of your dating site. You probably think your site is working just fine, but I guarantee the information navigation, layout and flow could use a refresh, resulting in more happy customers. I can help with that.

Enjoy the day, and make sure you tell someone you love them!

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Startup Review has published an eHarmony case study. Sections include Key success factors, Launch strategy and marketing, Exit analysis, Food for thought and Further Reading. The writer was previously an analyst at Sierra Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. No new information that hasn’t been covered here in the past but case studies are a quick way to get up to speed on the market for entrepreneurs. I’m trying to make it easier for you to mine the information here with new categories and better search, an ongoing process. In the meantime, Startup Review is worth a look.

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More interesting dating site feature reviews at RateOrDate. This time it’s search radius options. Andy certainly is gathering up useful comparison data for the next version of his service.

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