Virtual Dating = Longer Time on Site
Recently I had an interesting conversation with someone about why it makes sense to bring certain “virtual world” elements into the online dating space. We talked about how in virtual worlds there is much to do, but little purpose for being there … while in the online dating space, the opposite is true: a clear purpose for being there (i.e., to find a mate), but little to do (other than flipping through profiles and sending emails). So, giving users with a purpose a better virtual experience should keep them engaged longer … and, thus, should result in longer “time on site.”
So, today, I wanted to see if real-world data would lend support to this thinking. I pulled up Alexa (an online analytics tool) and compared “time on site” for several “virtual world” sites and OmniDate, which is a proxy for a “virtual dating” site. (Why do I call it a proxy? Because OmniDate is not a destination dating site per se, but rather a test site for a Virtual Dating application, which is meant to be plugged into other dating sites.)
The direction of results was certainly consistent with our little theory … but the magnitude of results was surprising! According to Alexa, an average user spends twice as much time on OmniDate than on virtual worlds (the blue line is OmniDate).
Before drawing any strong conclusions, i wanted to consider the possibility that users simply spend more time on dating sites in general than they do on virtual world sites. If that’s the case, then “time on site” for OmniDate should be the same as -or even lower than - any popular dating site (why lower? because OmniDate has much fewer profiles to browse).
I plunked few popular dating sites into Alexa …
Again, according to Alexa, an average user spends substantially more time on OmniDate than on some of the popular dating sites, such as Lavalife.
As an added measure, i also compared OmniDate with other smaller dating sites, just in case my assumption about an inverse relationship between the size of the DB and “time on site” was incorrect. I randomly chose several smaller sites from a quick Google search and plugged them into Alexa … OmniDate is still much higher.
So overall, this data seems to provide strong support for the notion that giving online daters a Virtual Dating experience can dramatically increase “time on site” …
Tags: Online Dating, time on site, Virtual Dating