Editor’s note: Malcolm Stewart is CEO of YouEye, Mountain View, Calif.-based market research firm.
People have been looking for love online since the earliest days of the Internet and there are many sites and apps designed to help people find romance. But the jury is out on whether these resources meet user needs. A national Pew Research Center study conducted in 2013 on dating and relationships in the digital era found that cultural attitudes have shifted toward greater acceptance of digital dating sites and apps. But there was no corresponding rise in online dating tool effectiveness.
The Pew study found that 38 percent of Americans who are single and looking for a partner use digital dating resources and 66 percent have gone on a date with someone they met online. Nearly a quarter of online daters say they met a spouse or found a long-term relationship using a dating site or app but that number hasn’t increased much from a similar study conducted a decade ago.
It’s difficult to determine how effective dating sites and apps are because the studies define success in a variety of ways. Some only consider marriage or long-term relationships as a success, whereas others determine success by the number of messages participants receive from potential dates. One factor does seem clear: Many users have negative experiences with online dating.
Complaints range from issues like harassment and unwanted contact and lower self-esteem to widespread lying and misrepresentations in online dating profiles. The catfish phenomenon is one example of how malicious use of online dating sites and apps can lead to a negative experience for users, both male and female.
More than half of online daters report that someone else completely misrepresented themselves in an online dating profile. Well over a quarter of online daters report being contacted by someone through the site or app in a way that made them uncomfortable: 42 percent of female online daters and 17 percent of male have reported harassing contact.
With the levels of dissatisfaction this high, it’s clear there’s room for improvement in online dating tools. Users deserve an experience that reduces the incidence of falling victim to false profiles, harassment or unwanted contact. They also deserve a matching process that goes beyond algorithms that reduce complex human beings to two-dimensional datasets.
What we do know is that the online dating world could be better. While nothing can replace interacting face-to-face, users want and deserve more from dating sites. What are the next steps involved in improving online dating?
Finding out what users want
The first step in improving online dating is figuring out what goals users have when they visit sites and apps and developing tools that help them achieve their objectives. To gain insight into the goals of one set of dating-site users, writer Ryan Dube spoke with a man and a woman who were both seeking long-term relationships on OkCupid.com and Match.com.
The woman Dube interviewed expressed concern about harassment and being judged by her appearance. She received many unsettling comments from men decades older than herself and indicated that dealing with creepy propositions soured her on responses from more suitable men. She also indicated a strong preference for face-to-face encounters, reporting that the lack of nuance, body language cues, etc., from text and photo-only apps and sites was a barrier to achieving her goals.
Dube also interviewed a man who had similar goals to those of the female interviewee but different concerns about how online dating works. Like the woman interviewed, the male subject suspected harassment was an issue that scared off many women who might otherwise respond to him. But his main issue with online dating was the lack of responses and mismatched dating prospects. He noted that he often had less in common with 90 percent or higher matches than with those in the 40 percent to 50 percent range.
To improve the user experience, online dating app developers can get more insight into what users are looking for with research. Companies traditionally conduct qualitative and quantitative studies independently. Qualitative research helps companies assess usability and is typically used to identify user interface/user experience (UI/UX) issues but it can’t provide data that actually drives customer acquisition and engagement. Also, small-scale usability tests cannot be trusted to deliver statistically viable insights as their sample sizes are typically as small as five to 10 users. Quantitative research can only affirm what the researcher already suspects are possible answers – a survey question only delivers data if researchers already know which questions they should be asking.
A better approach is to use a sample size of about 50 to assess both customer needs and intent as well as usability issues. This can be done by leveraging observational research via video, which can then inform in-depth quantitative study – removing the inference and guesswork out of design. Online dating companies can then use that information to conduct research on a larger scale to affirm content, messaging and user interface and user experience decisions at a strategic level.
Making online dating more human
Some algorithms undoubtedly work better than others but research shows that online dating as it now exists results in many bad dates and a lot of wasted time. An online dating analysis reported by the Association for Psychological Science found no compelling evidence to support the claims that dating site algorithms are particularly good at finding a great match.
One of the problems with online dating is that it gives only a few specific details about a potential date along with a photo. The man and woman interviewed by Dube both cited the lack of personal interaction as a problem in online dating and everyone who has used a site or app to find a date knows how difficult it is to assess a person’s suitability as a date from a thumbnail photo and written profile.
Online dating product developers can use research to find out what their audience needs and add elements to their products that meet these requirements. The research on dating sites so far suggests that video might be helpful since it will allow users to capture more nuance, body language cues and other intangibles that will help them form a more accurate impression.
Observational data acquired while simply watching how customers interact and getting them talking about their experience with the product – in addition to their expectations and desires – can be used to build a powerful gap analysis that can drive the development of an innovative experience and features that go far beyond generic usability testing. Observational data captured by video empowers product owners to get real insights: data that illuminates what they didn't already know or suspect, rather than simply confirming the conclusions they've already drawn.
But the need for research won’t end there: Online dating sites can learn much by assessing the user experience before, during and after the feature development process. Those who can accurately capture user requirements via qualitative research, meet requirements with new product features and continuously improve them to meet emerging needs can make online dating more human.