One of the major impacts of the lockdown has been to encourage many to reassess their life priorities. Being temporarily exiled from offices has not only compelled people to adapt to working from home, but it has also inspired them to consider abandoning the nine-to-five treadmill and unleash their inner creativity. If you’ve been tempted to set up your own business, have you considered online dating? Here’s what you need to know about launching a dating app.
Choose your niche
A hugely lucrative sector, dating sites in the UK currently generate millions in revenue. There are so many different aspects to dating in UK or worldwide, with some websites catering to generic tastes, while others focus on niche interest areas. Your new venture is going to be entering an already highly competitive marketplace, so perhaps it would make more sense to think of a topic that isn’t already massively popular, the try and put a unique spin on it whether it would be some theme or special geographic location. If you can think of an original way of projecting your chosen theme, executing it with style, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to carve your slice of the pie.
Write a business plan
It might seem a less exciting distraction from getting on with designing your killer dating site, but before you go any further, you’ll need a concrete business plan. This is where you transform your concept into print form, jotting down how you’ll create your site, what elements will be incorporated, what you will do differently, and how your business will pay for itself, and develop. How will your site cope with market fluctuations? Just like any other business idea, you’ll need to have a concrete plan if you hope to approach potential investors.
Seek technical advice
Producing websites is no longer a dark art, where you require to understand the intricacies of computer coding, javascript, or HTML, before knocking up a web page. There are bespoke solutions available online, with entire website templates that can be downloaded and customized without any coding knowledge. But there will still be technical aspects, such as introducing the financial platform (for processing customer payments) that might be better executed by a programmer. Creating an app version of a site also requires more specialist knowledge. So it would be worthwhile forking out for some design expertise at the outset. If this initial investment makes for a secure and trusted app, it will be worth it.
Make decisions about monetization
How will your app earn income? In most cases, dating apps will offer free registration and profile creation, to lure potential customers on board. But at some point, you’ll have to decide which features can only be accessed by fee-paying members. How much will you charge? What payment methods will you accept? Will you offer certain incentives, such as a scale that diminishes the longer the period of membership?
Plan for the future
Putting all these elements together - designing your site according to the brand you outlined in your business plan, and purchasing a domain name – is only the end of the first phase of your journey. Websites or apps should never remain static. For your dating enterprise to be successful, it must be fluid. Customer feedback is essential, allowing you to tweak issues as they are highlighted. Web traffic analysis will help you pinpoint areas like your most popular pages, as well as which parts of the world are forming the bulk of your customer base. You should also give your overall design a makeover now and again, as well as incorporating fresh images.
