Archive for August, 2010

Dating Script Templates: Color Tips

Friday, August 20th, 2010

When you own an online community or dating site, you know that you never have a second chance to make first impression. Your web site design is just as important as its domain and conception. A carefully chosen template can create the right atmosphere, and put your site members in the right mood – flirty, or cheerful and ready-to-make-friends.

Did you know that a template color can greatly influence the way visitors feel about your site? There is a whole division in marketing that studies color influence on potential customers’ behavior, which can help you increase sales/attract more members to your site. In order to get the best of your dating/social networking site template, make sure it meets the color marketing principles given below.

Colors, and messages they communicate.

White – is a symbol of innocence and purity. White color chosen as a background gives your site a ‘clean’ look that does not irritate the eye. It makes the design simple and stylish, and allows you to add a large number of colorful components. White background is recommended for the sites that offer much to read on the pages.

Black – is a color of authority and power. This color evokes strong emotions, and is often associated with luxurious classics and elegance. It helps to create an atmosphere of mystery and intimacy. Too much of black color can look overwhelming. But if you add a few bright colors, your design will look catchy, colorful and attractive.

Red – is known to be a symbol of love, passion, aggression, energy and excitement. It has a stimulating effect for any kind of appetite. So if you are starting an adult dating web site, red color in your template components is a must-have.

Green – this color has calming and stabilizing effect. It is associated with health, nature and money. If your web site is health-oriented, or is about offering financial services – choosing green background or components will be a good idea.

Blue – is loved by most people. Darker shades of blue are perfect for business networks, as they symbolize trustworthiness, stability and professionalism. Light blue colors give a feeling of freshness and cleanliness, and can get your members in the careless mood.

Yellow – is a color of sunshine, happiness and laughter. It stimulates our brain to release serotonin, which gets us in the cheerful and energetic state of mind. This color used in design components and background can become a great tool for inviting new members to your social/community site.

Orange – is associated with energy, pleasure, fun and warmth. Somehow this color makes expensive products look more affordable. It is vibrant and sharp enough to make your members feel anything but calmness.

Gray – represents all the solid and practical things.  Silver color, which is a hue of gray, represents high tech style. Too much of gray in web site design is sure to look dull, but adding a few gray components will give your web site a touch of solidity and seriousness that are essential for business networks.

Golden – this color is a symbol of wealth and luxury. Adding a few golden components will make your design look classy and attractive.

Once you’ve chosen the design colors that match your site conception, it’s time to think on combining them in a harmonious way.
For that we recommend to take a look at the color wheel (aka chromatic circle), and choose one of the color schemes that helps to match colors in the best way.

Monochromatic color scheme – is based on choosing colors from one color segment (for example, lighter and darker shades of green). It gives your site design an integral clean look.

Complimentary color scheme – is built on using colors that are opposite to each other on the chromatic circle. The warm-cold combination is always eye-catching. It makes your site look fresh and lively.

Analogue color scheme – is using three neighboring color segments. This combination makes design harmonious and colorful.

Triple color scheme – is about using three color segments equally standing out from each other on the color wheel (for example, red, yellow and blue). This combination looks unexpectedly stylish and pleasant to the eye.

SkaDate Dating Script has a wide range of dating and community templates for any taste and site conception. But for those who want to stand out in a crowd by developing a unique template – there is every possibility for customization, because our dating software has a 100% open source code.

Build Your Members Database: 5 Great Tips

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Whether or not your site is successful is determined by how populated it is. Your site members are a source of subscriptions, and are exactly what paying advertisers are always after.

The main question is how to build a members database? How to encourage people to sign up for your services when there is so much competition around? I will put Search Engine Optimization, interesting conception, attractive design and dating software platform with abundance of features aside. Let’s assume you have that all (because if you don’t – it’s hard to ever hope for success).

Basically, you can choose one of the two ways:

Populate your site with fake profiles.

We’d recommend you against creating an illusion of a busy site by integrating a fake members database. First of all, people now see way too many sites populated with model-looking members who never return messages. These days only lazy Internet surfers don’t know what a fake profile is. That is why another site full of beautiful, professional photos is likely to make them nothing more than bored and irritated. Potential users will simply not give your site any trust credit, while trust credit is something that can make your community site different, and put you ahead of competitors.

Give up an idea of integrating fake profiles for natural ways of members database building.

‘But who will want to join an empty site?’, you ask. Well, if you follow the five tips given below, the answer will be ‘Quite many potential members’:

1. Offline promotion. Don’t let your ad campaign be limited to Internet marketing, even though the largest part of your audience may be coming from the web. Offline promotion can work wonders for your site popularity, especially if it is geo-targeted. Promotional flyers, ads in your local newspaper and radio station are great tools to attract attention. You might also want to organize an event that will reflect your site conception, and give you a chance to introduce your project to potential members in person. What is especially good about offline promotion is little to no competition. So you get all the advantages of being the first to introduce yourself to an ‘offline customers segment’.

2. Promotional memberships.You don’t expect your site members to start paying right away, do you? You should first deserve

their sympathy by proving that your site is worth coming back to. Offer promitional (trial) memberships with all features and privileges included. The potential users will feel a lot more relaxed about using your services if they don’t risk anything. You can give a free lifetime membership to the first, say, 100 registered members. Or give a free trial to anyone joining your site for a limited time period. And don’t forget to put an attractive banner to your site index page with all the promotional membership advantages listed.

3. Involve your friends at the first stage of creating a members database. Ask them to register on your site, add photos and other content to their profiles. Ten to fifteen active members will be enough not to let the site look empty. That’s especially good for a social networking conception, because your friends will be able to really enjoy online communication on your site not having to imitate activity.

4. Make your site stand out in a crowd. One of the ways to do that is show that you deserve some trust credit (remember, I mentioned that before). As an option, you can show that all the profiles on your site are real, and that your members get exactly what they see. You can do that by using a photo verification tool, and marking the verified profiles as ‘authenticated’.

5. Use the referral system to attract more members to your site. Award the referrers with cash, user points (that they can spend on your site), souvenirs with your site logo (caps, t-shirts, cups, etc), movie tickets and other useful things. Viral marketing is some powerful stuff. Don’t forget to add the share options to your site pages for spreading content through social networks and bookmarking sites.

This is not an ultimate guide for members database building. You will find a lot more ways and tricks to make people visit your site, and stay a part of your community for long. The main ingredients of true popularity is your creativity and will to succeed.