Dating Site Blog & SEO

So many dating sites appear to have messed up the single most important factor in retaining customer loyalty and driving increased site usage; i.e. the users’ photo album.  The importance in providing good, clear, easily accessible images to people browsing a dating site is well documented.  However, what are the main criteria for a good photo browsing experience?

First, we need to define the website limitations.  The administrator of a dating site can not realistically demand that all users submit professionally-taken photos; therefore the aesthetics of the image itself are not taken into consideration.  Then we are left with what the site designer can actually be responsible for:

• provide large images (a generous reciprocal crop factor should be supported)
• well-proportioned images (no vertical/horizontal skewing should occur during post-upload processing)
• quick load of each and every image after a user-triggered event
• easy navigation between images
• main image must be bigger than the thumbnail
• main image must not extend over the average page dimensions
• if possible, allow user to upload photo description for every image

Most sites flaunt at least one of these rules and a ridiculously high percentage only have one or two of the rules implemented.  I have seen some sites where the thumbnail image is actually the same size as the main image (if it is too small the photo is hard to see; if it is too large it takes too long to download).

I think the best solution is to utilise average size thumbnails, with the corresponding main image at least 4-6 times the dimensions of the thumbnail.  With the pervasive adoption of Javascript, there is no excuse not to allow users to view the images via a rollover function, and all on the same page.  In addition, there should be no need to navigate to a different page or a pop-up window to view the clicked-on image.  Follow these straightforward rules and the user will have a far more convenient browsing experience and usability frustration need not drive them away.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 3:02 pm and is filed under datingsite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.