Alternate design for men vs. women

Earlier this semester a number of CBS students met with the founders of “how about we.com”, a dating website that differentiates itself by having its members advertise potential dates they would like to go on rather than just posting a profile.  For example, a user might suggest a date of going for a walk in the park, visiting a specific museum, or getting dim sum in Chinatown. 

Howaboutwe.com also has a second model focusing on the user segment that has successfully met someone.  Rather than deactivating their account, users are invited to upgrade and join the ‘couples’ section of the dating site.   Under the upgraded model, a couple will be emailed once per month with a list of possible dates they can go on that are included in their monthly fee, from which the couple can chose one and pay no further amount.   

The site was started 2.5 years ago by two former school teachers who used to design curriculums for charter schools.  They got 3.5 million in funding in early and later 15 million in a second round.

What is interesting about the site is not only its two pronged approach to the online dating industry (going after both people looking for dates and also successful couples in relationships), but also the dominant demographic on the site: women aged 27 through 40.  Most other sides are predominantly men.  The implications for this were broad in terms of how the site had to alter its layout and design of its webpages to appeal more towards women and the founders commented that they had to alter the layout significantly.

One specific piece of learning the founders had in the design of the entire site was the extreme increase in signups if they could decrease their sign-up time below a specific threshold.  They learned to design the site more more simply, as more sophisticated signup interfaces received lower conversion rates.   Something as basic as putting an‘upgrade’ prompt on more pages (rather than just the user’s home page) increased upgrades  significantly.  This argues strongly for designing sites as simply possible and for reducing initial sign up processes to as short of a time period as possible.

-zb