I received an email from Match to participate in their survey. Mark Williamson, Director of Research at Match.com, is responsible for the survey. I took it, and here are my initial comments.
Ideas they are testing
1) Ability to turn off ads on the Match.com site
2) Opportunity to have higher placement in search results
3) Stand out in search results with a different color profile
Match website is definitely too crowded and busy these days, removing ads might help with the clutter.
Higher placement and colored profiles is straight from FriendFinder playbook, nothing new there. Higher placement in search results is interesting, although no info on how they would do this. Currently the only way to stay on top is to log in several times a day.
Be one of the first profiles that a new member sees
Profile highlighting
$37.95
Priority Placement in Search Results & Profile highlighting & turn off ads
$37.45
Be the first to be seen by new users
$34.19
Priority Placement in Search Results
Profile highlighting
Be the first to be seen by new users
Turn Off Ads
$39.29
Priority Placement in Search Results
Be the first to be seen by new users
$35.95
Priority Placement in Search Results
Profile highlighting
$36.69
General Membership
$29.95
Lot’s of other variations I won’t go into here.
Proposed prices for these services are confusing and the survey was tedious. They asked the same questions overand over with slight tweaks to price and offer. By the 12th page I was just clicking buttons to get over with it The last page is totally out of place, asking you 20 or so questions about your personality. You can’t finish the survey without clicking a radio button for each selection. These questions definitely belonged in a separate survey.
We’ll see what they do with the data they gather. Upping prices could be a disaster, but the highlighting stuff is a good move, as proven by several other services already.