citydate.com Review

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Just havent done it yet. But its done now Thanks for the heads up sorry I was looking at many different sites in this thread, I must say there are so many good ones. Thanks

Love your logo... little flyaway heart... Great job!

I also think your happy couple look good. For once the people on a homepage don't scare me.

I do think you've got an awful lot of blue going on here. I know it's a calming color and you've got a couple nice gradients going, but it might be a little too monochrome. (of course that's a personal judgement)

I don't know what else to say... the navigation seems straitforward and logical... your design doesn't seem to be too crowded, but you get everything in...
I guess the only nits I would have is too much blue and you don't offer a static banner for a link.

Best of luck!

Thaks KarenArt we appreciate that review very much.

Looks good. Is this a template? If it is, you've done a great job customizing them. The only reason I ask that is because the design is sort of template-ish. The way the navbar and page headings are done, particularly.

I do find the font size to be rather small in the more texty areas. I was looking for information about the pricing structure. Different dating sites use differnt models for pricing. Even the FAQ doesn't say how much it's going to cost. Dating sites all have different ways of doing this so it's important to be clear about how messages are sent and what you have to do to send/recieve them. IMO, the best models are those that require you to purchase "tokens" that you use to send messages to people. A few benefits of this are that people can still receive messages and get in touch with people for free. It also only costs according to your level of participation. If you don't find anyone to contact in a month, you're not still paying. (In practice, this means that women don't have to pay anything. It is assumed that the men will buy tokens to contact women. Therefore, more women are attracted to the service. With more women available, more men will want to join too. )People don't want to join something that's going to cost them too much, especially when they can go someplace else and pay less.

I have to go to a meeting - I'll finish this later if I remember.

Here's some more.

I really like the look and feel. Nice colour scheme, great header, and I really like the little heart with wings. Great job on the design.

You page titles need a lot of work. Search engines put a lot of importance in page titles so put some keywords in there! The page title should also tell the person where they are, so put "Citydate.com" in all the page titles as well.

I'm about to try signing up now. One thing I haven't seen in is the geographical limiations for this site. Whill I be able to find people in my area? I can't seem to find that out before I sign up.

Have the country list pre-set to the country most commonly chosen. When I see "Afghanistan" up there first I get a little worried. Why am I allowed to choose my country, but then asked to choose from a list of states? If you're going to be international, put a text field there for state/province. I think that you could really make that a selling point, something that sets you apart from the competition. Some people may be really interested in meeting people from other countries.

At the bottom you have a list of relationship types. "activity partner" and "casual" are a little unclear. You don't want people to misunderstand what you mean. Most dating sites have an option for "intimate encounters" or something along those lines so they may substittue one of your unclear options. That could cause problems.

Overall this looks really promising. Good luck with it.

Megan,

Great feed back thanks a bunch. We are actually still under development so many of the things you mentioned are being addressed already. The reason there really is no focus on pricing is becasue right now on the homepage it states you get a one year free memberhsip becasue of this starter promo we havent put much into price awareness etc becasue the site is free. I have noted everything you mentioned here and will definetly be putting some thought into your ideas. Thanks a bunch again and I will post again when the site is final.

Out of curiosity - how many members do you have already?

I've noticed that with these kinds of websites, there is usually a vicious circle - people won't sign up unless you already have members and you can't have members of people don't sign up.

In general I like the layout and the concept (if I understood it correctly), that you can meet singles in your specific area.

I definitely hope things will work out for you!

Boris

I guess that's why they're doing the free membership!

Anyways... the site looks gorgous, it's really attractive but did you *have* to use tables for the design? I think it would be possible to recreate that design using completely css based layout and it would make your pages load much faster AND reduce your bandwidth costs!

I have a new site that is producing some solid unique visitors every day. I am a little concerned because it seems like our conversation to signing members up aren’t that good. Most of the site exits are on the home page. I was wondering if you could take a look at the homepage and give me some advice on how to better the content to drive more visitors to sign up and push people to read further into the site. I would really appreciate some quality advice here, and for anyone that offers some good help I will give them a text link on my site. Please visit w w w.c i t y d a t e . com

Thanks

www.citydate.com (for those who were as vexed as I was for having to individually remove the spaces)

Nice site.. I really do like your grapic work. I would suggest keeping it exactly the way you have it but cut down the height.

I would work on your Meta Tags... I think there are some folks on this forum that specialize in optimization.

I spidered your site, and our review team would have accepted your site, but they would have changed how it appears in our database .. something that all search engines can do without impacting your listing with others.

Your title "Citydate.com Online dating, personals, singles, matchmaking, advice, free relationship services"

This reads more like keywords than a title. We would not have this appear has your listing title. We would cut it to read Citydate.com

Your description..

"CityDate.com, 50,000 single men or women that sign up now will get a one year free online dating membership Limited Time Only. If you’re looking for online love, personals, matchmaking, advice, free relationship services then CityDate is the web site for you."

This is (for us) to long, and many search engines have a set that auto clips your chararcters. Also you have your special offer in your description, and when it expires the description will be outdated. You need one that will read the way you want to keep it..

Keywords..

"Dating service, dating site, online dating, personal ad, matchmaking, match maker, matchmaker, single, date, people, dating, match, men, women, partner, online dating service, love, romance, friendship, relationship, singles, sexy, advice, tip, single parent, free, web site"

I would consider dropping words like "service, site, maker, people, men, women, partner, tip, online, parent, free, sexy, advice, web site," these words are to general as to the relevance of your content.

Last point I would be careful of linking to "adult" content because you may be rated in that category.

My comments are intended to help and only express my opinion. I would seek advice from professionals in the area of optimization...

Have a good weekend

Yes, I love this site. Nice clean, peffesional layout. No red layout for love, but this can often make the user think that it is a poor site. You by any chance didn't use a template for this did you?

Was wondering about this:

Last point I would be careful of linking to "adult" content because you may be rated in that category.

I didnt think we linked to any adult sites, could you inform me on what link you clicked that brought you to adult sites?

I appreciate the feedback very much and will look into the optimization tips. I am still not having trouble getting people to the site it seems more of an issue of signing them up. What do you think would you sign up for this service if you would why if no why not?

Thanks

Dirty_Dawg See Below:

Was wondering about this statement, could you let me know (Last point I would be careful of linking to "adult" content because you may be rated in that category.)

I didnt think we linked to any adult sites, could you inform me on what link you clicked that brought you to adult sites?

Part of the problem is going to be because you don't have many people in there. What's the point of joining if there's nobody there to meet?

I'm thinking the second problem may be lack of information about pricing. You say free - for how long? Everyone knows that nothings stays free forever. I think you need to be more clear about that. There is a line under the logo stating that the first 50,000 members get a free gold membership, but other "join now" buttons don't have that information (you could just put "limited time offer" underneath, linking to the details page). Secondly, I can't find anything that states what other membership options you would have and how much it would cost. I mean, if this is going to be an expensive site I may not join even if it's not going to cost me. It will cost a lot for others and membership will therefore be prohibitive in the future. Okay, so it is in the FAQ, but I shouldn't have to go there to find that out.

Another thing is the text. I'm finding the font size too small and hard to read, and the grammar and writing style needs work.

Quote: You the member may cancel your CITYDATE, LLC (citydate.com) GOLD membership, without any penalty or obligation, at any time prior to midnight of the seller's third business day following the original date of the purchase.

What ?!??! Could you be any more confusing?

In general, I think there is a lot of ambiguity about how this works. There seems to be two models of online dating site - the montly subscription model or the tokens model. IME, the tokens model works best (see lavalife.com). It is unclear as to which option you are using here.

There are two things I would want to know before signing up: 1. Are there suitable people here for me to meet? 2. How much is it going to cost me to send and receive messages? A lot of places seem to leave that in the fine print (i.e. it's free to sign up, but you can't actually communicate without paying, or you can only use all the features for a limited time).

While I'm here, get rid of the centering on the sign-up form. It would be much nicer if everything lined up on the left side. Same thing on the search page.

In your logs, do you find that people get past the front page? What other pages are they viewing? That might be helpful.

More ideas:

You could try being more transparent about your status as a new site trying to get things rolling. Something like "Be the first to try out our new service" might be good.

Try moving the quick search to the top where the welcome box is. That might encourage people to jump right in faster.

Move the line with the "First 50,000 people..." over to the right so it's not direcltly under the hands and swooshy things. If it has some white space around it it maybe more noticeable.

Guided tour could use some work (IF people are going there...) It's so boring. It should be more dynamic and exciting. Answer the question: What can I do here and why should I join? How does it work? But not with too much text. Short bullet points and lots of pictures.

Ah, found this: "CityDate offers this premium online dating service for one low monthly cost". That's a little more of what I wanted to know. The information about how this site works seems to be scattered around and there's a lot of searching and reading required to gether everything together.

Maybe offer more romantic pictures... people visiting want dates and hope you can provide them with one... maybe a little less words on the home page.

Also if anyone searched -- some may feel the current profiles are a little haphazard. Maybe a little editing and a few more photos if possible. I am female and searched for a male... Maybe get some models... Is that allowed..? truth in advertising issues... not that the pictures were bad, it's just that there were not enough... and you need draws... more photos would help...

Q...

Great site.

Very impressive graphics, etc.

I recommend finding and promoting a unque niche for the site rather than trying to be all things for all people.
Also...
In my opinion the long lenth of the registraion form looks a bit overwhelming. I would split the process into another section or two. Or maybe just make the first registration page shorter so people are more likely to get started on it.

I like the image design on the top. Very impressed.

Are you sure it isn't a template
Or has someone asked that question before? When I took a break from this forum I forget about everything
If it isn't then I really like it.
The text at the bottom is a bit small. i do really think that it is very important to have something like that, but I think that possibly it's a bit too long. If you're having to make it that small for it to fit in that box, then it's too long.
But, keep it the good work: - its a grea site!