

Show HN: I paid an engineer $4k to build a dating site - ngm1985

http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.percodate.com&#x2F; - DO NOT PAY FOR THE SITE. Use code HEYHN if you want to sign up.<p>I&#x27;ve had some experience with website development, but I&#x27;m not technical whatsoever. So I went on craigslist (in Los Angeles) to look for an engineer to build a dating site.<p>Luckily, I found someone amazing. We agreed on $4,000 in milestone payments and $6,000 in potential bonuses if the site does well.<p>We recently launched the site and would love your feedback. I know the design is lacking, but any feedback would be appreciated!!
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8_hours_ago
Random impressions:

\- The "Home", "Sign In" and "Sign Up" links at the top of the main page don't
go anywhere. The "Home" link is unnecessary. The "Sign In" and "Sign Up" links
should go to anchor tags at the sign in and sign up forms.

\- The Birthdate drop down menus are broken for me on the sign up form. I only
see a vertical scroll bar when I select the day and month, and I have both
vertical and horizontal scroll bars when I select the year.

\- The What I Want page should initially has nothing selected in each box. I
think each option should start populated with "Anything". That way if I don't
care about pets one way or another, I don't have to waste a few clicks setting
it. Or do I need to actually change an option from "Choose Option" to
"Anything"? It's unclear.

\- When I finally select everything in the "What I Want" page, the red text
"Please choose an option for each field." doesn't go away. Did I not select
everything well enough?

\- At the bottom of the "What I Want" page you have every percentage listed
from 16/16 to 0/16\. Is that really necessary?

\- The Profile page has square images on top of other users, but when I resize
my browser window too small horizontally they're squished into rectangles. In
addition, those images are huge! It took a few seconds for them to load the
first time I visited the page. They should probably be resized. Also, perhaps
profile images should be stored as jpegs instead of pngs?

\- Search form, perhaps it should be pre-populated with the options that I
chose on the "What I Want" page? And again, even when I have every option
selected, it still says "Please choose an option for each field."

\- On someone's profile, under their Personality Type, there's a yellow circle
that on mouseover says "They don't have your preferred personality type, but
keep reading!". What? When did I specify a preferred personality type?

On a whole, it looks well done for a MVP. Some other people have criticized
the lack of design, but personally, I like the minimalist look. These are just
first impressions, I hope they help.

FYI, I'm using Firefox 29.0 on Linux.

~~~
ngm1985
Thanks for signing up and digging deep/doing the dirty work, 8_hours_ago!

I have all your comments saved and noted. To make a few responses:

I was worried people wouldn't understand the message filtering feature, so I
probably overdid it with the 16/16 thru 0/16 copy.

The "Please choose an option for each field." copy is permanently there, but I
can see why it's confusing after filling everything out so we'll have to
change this.

The browser resizing has been a bit of a struggle. We're making it a
responsive site, but we'll keep working on it.

Overall, thank you for your detailed response. It definitely helps. And I
appreciate your comment on the minimalist look!

------
tzaman
Well, you paid $4k and it shows. No clear UVP (unique value proposition), no
design, looks half done - if even. I would not use the word _amazing_ with
this - in any context.

~~~
ngm1985
Definitely an MVP, tzaman. And my apologies I wasn't more clear. In my
opinion, he's done an amazing job for being the only engineer working on this
and making it come to life. I also value our working relationship as we wound
up being a great team. A lot can go wrong with someone you don't (OR even do)
know.

~~~
pskittle
you should probably include a way to get in touch with you in your profile

~~~
ngm1985
Thanks for the heads up, pskittle!

------
leepowers
What makes you different? Why would I use this site instead of Tinder or
Match.com or even craigslist? There's a ton of dating sites. What makes your
matching algorithm and filtering tools special? The screenshots on the home
page don't really communicate this.

Second, I'd allow users to search before registering an account. But contact
details are withheld until account creation. That way I can verify the
efficacy of the matching and filtering functions before paying money. Or put
another way - if I find someone interesting, I'm more likely to whip out my
credit card and pay to get in contact with that potential special someone.

~~~
ngm1985
Thank you for the feedback! I was hesitant about doing what you said with the
search/registering an account. I didn't want it to feel too bait and switch.
But I'll definitely be sending this to the engineer!

How it's different:

We let you filter your inbox with the exact same criteria as the search
criteria (Ethnicity, Body type, Height, etc). This is mainly for women who
normally receive a lot of messages on other sites.

We also let you know if you meet a certain threshold of what someone else
wants (whatever criteria they are choosing to filter their inbox with). This
is mainly for men so they don't waste time sending messages to women
definitely not interested in them.

When all the other dating sites brag about number of messages being sent, we
want to be the exact opposite. We're all about sending LESS messages.

~~~
splintercell
> We let you filter your inbox with the exact same criteria as the search
> criteria (Ethnicity, Body type, Height, etc). This is mainly for women who
> normally receive a lot of messages on other sites.

The problem is this, that most people don't really know what they want.

Pretty much all the dating sites have filters on them for allowing you to
chose which profiles you wanna see.

The outcome? Any woman who uses these filters message the same set of guys,
tall, making decent income, same ethnicity, same religion, good looking(if you
use OKC looks filters), etc etc. Most women I have dated, would never even
find my profile on an online dating site(ethnicity, religion and height would
disqualify most of them).

Similarly as a guy, if you qualify for most of these filters, then you end up
staring at pretty much every girl out there. If you are just in it for short
term dating, then its fine, but sooner or later you get fed of not being able
to meet a girl you can talk to.

Yes, most people while looking for a partner look for these fixed attributes,
but what most profile-centric sites miss is that most people do not actually
end up with a six ft tall $100K+ making blond, blue eyed european model. When
I meet a girl at Phish concert, she is not just another person who fits all my
checklist, she is a person I found appealing, and I met her at a Phish
concert.

Some sites such as HowAboutWe are kind of doing it right by moving away from
profile-centric nature to activity-centric(but they still leave something to
desire). I wish you understood that profile-centric sites(or rather MOST
dating sites) are still hugely disappointing to men/women, attractive/average,
straight/gay etc people alike.

~~~
ngm1985
I think you're pretty spot on with your thoughts, splintercell.

Personally, I love and believe speed dating is the best option for most
people. Even if you don't find someone you're attracted to, you can still have
great conversations. Unfortunately, this is out of the comfort zone for most
people (only if they knew!).

I'm hoping this is the next best option within online dating. People have
checklists and I think it's only fair we indulge them. We give people
options/criteria/fields for searching, so it seems plausible to apply the same
to peoples' inboxes.

If people wind up being lonely or finding the wrong person due to their high
standards, hopefully they'll adapt their standards or find a better outlet to
pursue dating/love.

~~~
benjamincburns
Respectfully, I think you're wrong on your conclusion.

There's a lack of alignment between a person's explicitly declared preferences
and the things which actually make them happy. This is so ridiculously true
when it comes to dating on and offline.

I think this is the real, society advancing problem on which dating centric
startups should focus. I'm all for indulging people (and making a buck), but
sites like this one generally are useless, depressing, and alienating to a
good number of their users.

Edit:

There's also a really harmful cycle of addiction which a lot of people get
into on these sites. Quite often the proprietors design their dating sites to
promote such cycles, and it's more than a little depressing.

To see what I'm talking about, read Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker post [1], and
then imagine that the daunting chore of participating in the "social game" is
directly tied to your self worth.

At the very least please don't do that to your users.

1:
[http://bogost.com/writing/blog/cow_clicker_1/](http://bogost.com/writing/blog/cow_clicker_1/)

~~~
splintercell
> There's a lack of alignment between a person's explicitly declared
> preferences and the things which actually make them happy. This is so
> ridiculously true when it comes to dating on and offline. <

I completely agree with you. That was my original point. Nick's answer just
didn't make any sense to me. How can you agree that people don't know what
they want, yet say that that this is why he created this app, when the
explicit stated intention is "dating sites for people who know what they
want".

This is more like a "dating site for people who think they know what they
want".

------
wiseleo
Congrats on getting it done to this point. You underestimated how being on HN
affects your traffic so it's a little sluggish. ;)

You have too much tiny text. Your signup form is not distinctive. Even adding
a class of "bg-success" to your div with the id of "signup-form" (that will
give it a greenish background) would be somewhat helpful. Spend some time
reading [http://getbootstrap.com](http://getbootstrap.com) and you'd be
surprised how much you better you will get in a few hours once you understand
which classes are available to you. It has a lot of decorator classes that
will transform your colorless UI instantly.

Since you provided no test user credentials and I am not willing to skew your
metrics by registering, I can't evaluate how the site functions for a
registered user.

You featured a blog post very prominently and wrote it in a self-deprecating
style. While I appreciate the creativity, that does not help in increasing
conversions.

My biggest concern

I am not sensing product direction besides your innovative mailbox that
filters by intent. This feels like "I wanted to try building a dating website
and didn't think about a unique hook".

I agree that traditional dating sites have abysmal messaging. This can be a
good hook.

~~~
ngm1985
Thank you, wiseleo. I actually didn't think this post would do too well. As
usual, I was wrong!

Appreciate the UI feedback. We'll do some touch ups to liven it up a bit with
the help of getbootstrap.com.

I'm a little bummed about the blog post not making at least a decent
impression. My humor is all I have! (the blog post referenced -
[http://blog.percodate.com/we-built-a-dating-
website](http://blog.percodate.com/we-built-a-dating-website))

The hook without a doubt is the messaging. The goal is to give women relief
and men more time back/focus on who to message.

Thank you again!

~~~
wiseleo
As-is, this is not an MVP. V stands for "viable" and right now I don't get the
sense that it is so. You have a skeleton running, but it doesn't feel like a
product yet.

------
rwhitman
Dating is the most aggressively competitive social media vertical there is.
Dark artists lurk in this place, Harvard MBA geniuses with cold hearts and
unfathomable amounts of cash. Backroom deals are made to carve up ad publisher
territory. Data scientists are plucked from the recruiting pool like daisies
from the meadow.

Is that the space you want to compete in? Are you positioned to win here? Step
back and look at the big picture.

------
leepowers
FYI, the Birthday drop-down menus are funky in FF30.0 on OSX10.9.3:
[http://i.imgur.com/D9NF5A6.png](http://i.imgur.com/D9NF5A6.png)

------
abimaelmartell
You really need to hire a designer :S

Or buy a premade template and adjust it to your needs (if you want the cheap).

------
selamtux
i want to give an advise to you as a software developer, please find a
designer before find an developer, mostly users want to see "everything ready"
web site/projects and most of the time you can show the ideas and flowcharts
of project to developers and other business people.

drawing first, writing later.

------
5414h
Its looks ugly needs some css designs :/

------
melvinmt
Is this a prototype or the actual website?

~~~
ngm1985
MVP, melvinmt.

------
vishalzone2002
IMO, 4k is pretty high for this.

