HN Explorer

Show HN: Online dating for people who don't do online dating

9 points by HeyImAlex ↗ HN
I've been quietly learning web development for about a year now after getting intoxicated by the media darling startup scene back when it was REALLY going mainsteam with the release of the social network. So I drank that koolaid and joined the club and I resolved to create a semi-competent web dev from my humble highschool CS 1 roots. A year's gone by and my first project is finally done. It's a simple online dating app that tries to make online dating appeal to a more casual crowd while removing a few of the major pitfalls of current online dating websites, most notably fear of rejection, by only selectively showing positive actions and obscuring all negative ones in some way or another. Here's the site.

http://www.heyithinkyourecute.com

It's not pretty and it's not perfect but fail fast and fail often right? Please tell me what you think!

7 comments

[ 1580 ms ] story [ 1858 ms ] thread
DanBC
Good Luck!

White on bright blue hurt (not exaggerating) my eyes.

There's a type on "Head into Matchmaking" - "no thanks if you'rE not"

There's another type in 4, with an extra capital G.

The section "Do your thing" has a funny picture, with "masterful strategy" written over a crude message. Have you ever signed up to dating sites as a woman? Have you got market research from women? Women are an important part of your market, and I suspect that they'd like to know there are rigorous controls to protect them from creeps. So, maybe add that information before the joke? (I just noticed that you do have info about a quality block, but that's hidden behind a roll-over image. It's a great feature! Don't hide it.)

HeyImAlex
Thanks! About that image; it's a relic from when I first wrote the landing page (it was late and the copy was decidedly more crude) but I'm changing to something more in tune with my audience now.

As for market research, I talked to quite a few girls about it but it was mostly relegated to visual design. The rest was just me using ux stories to make what I thought would the best functionality for everyone. Not the greatest strategy I know, but I'm learning

And I've been working on making the contrast between white and the background more bearable but it's been tough. I'll take another look at it today.

Thanks again!

ugyuyguy
Temp account to just say, congratulations, fantastic idea and nicely executed. I would change a lot of things, been in the online dating business many years ago. Great fun...loving it!
sontek
"We should have sex some time" as an example message to send is probably giving off the wrong message and will not attract the crowd you want.
HeyImAlex
Yeah, sorry about that, it was addressed below(above?). It should be fixed now.
md1515
Not a bad idea and UI/UX. I'm checking it out now. Good luck with it.

I was just running through the matches and there are like >10 girls (which is fine for a young startup). Nonetheless, don't just have a message that says you're out of matches. Allow the user to start his /her search over again. The site is of no use to me now because I couldn't see matches.

HeyImAlex
There is definitely a chicken/egg problem at work here that will be hard to break early on. In the long run I'm hoping for a pool of users large enough that reaching the end isn't likely for your average signup, but for now you're completely right. I worry that repetition could be worse than blatant running out since a big part of the site is variety (whereas seeing the same girls over and over feels more like helpless stagnation), but I'll try and come up with a better way to engage new users while we're still really young. Thanks for taking a look!