New photo upload facility

As we said yesterday, one of the things that came out of the members survey was that many members had been having problems uploading their photos to the site. Today we have completely re-engineered the photo upload facility to hopefully be easier to use and more reliable. You can now upload up to five photos at the same time and we have added some extra error capturing detect any issues and let us you what the problem is (e.g. wrong file format, etc…).

The editing of uploaded photos remains the same, simple click the photo and a little menu will appear with options to allow you to make the photo your main photo, delete the photo or add a caption to the photo.

We hope this change is useful and makes that part of the site easier to use, please feel free to leave a comment.

Popularity: 65% [?]

Members Survey Results

Firstly, a big thanks to everyone that took the time to answer our members survey, the response was good and the data very helpful. We wanted to share with you some of the insights we gained and let you know about some of the things we are going to change in the coming weeks to address problems identified by the responses.

Results

Overall most members were satisfied with the site (about 80%) and the majority of members visit at least two or more times a week. There was a general consensus that the sites appearance is good, with a small minority having a small issue with the colour palette used on the site.

The main issue raised by the survey was related to the search on the site. About half the members where satisfied with the search but the other half where either undecided or dissatisfied with the search.

Most respondents through the messaging system on the site was good and either “very easy” or “somewhat easy” to use.

The forums were another point of contention with respondents. Nearly half were “undecided” on how easy they are to use and only 18% having actually posted. The main two reasons for not posting in the in forums, accounting for 60% together, was they hadn’t found anything worth commenting on or that they did not understand what the forum is for.

In terms of service to members, the vast majority had never contacted CFD for assistance however of the members that had the vast majority were completely satisfied with the service they received and the time it took to get a response. The main reason for contacting CFD was for assistance in uploading photos to the their profile.

The main thing that respondents say they liked about the site was the fact it is truly free. In response to the question about what people like least there was a wide range of different responses, however many again mentioned the search and again in response to the question about what could be improved, the vast major of people mentioned the search process.

Changes

Based on the responses to the survey we are going to spend a considerable amount of time looking at the search process on the site. We have already identified a couple of issues and also have some changes that we hope will improve the user experience with the search. As soon as these changes have been released to the site we will let you know via the blog and forums.

We are also going to look at making the photo upload process simpler and add the ability to obtain photos from different sources, like a mobile phone and online photo sharing services. Again once this is released we will let you know via the blog and forums.

More

If you have anything more you would like to let us know, please leave a comment below or email us at questions@completelyfreedating.co.uk. Thanks.

Popularity: 47% [?]

10% of Britons fall for scams

According to a new study published by the Office of Fair Trading, 10% of adults in Britain have fallen for a scam:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8490275.stm

Really!!! To me that is shocking. Most scams are pretty obvious to spot and if you follow the golden rule, if it too good to be true then it is, I’m pretty sure that 99% of the time you will be fine.

Obviously online dating sites, like other social networking sites, are a hot bed for scammers, both home grown and from overseas, so keep your wits about you, read are dating safety advice articles and you should be fine. Remember, NEVER NEVER NEVER send money to anyone or give them your bank or personal details.

Popularity: 51% [?]

New feature released

We have just released a new feature to the site that will allow you to do two new things in the “My Favourites” section. We have added two new buttons to each “favourite” in your list.

The first button is “Send a message” which lets you send a message directly to the member straight from the favourites list.

The second button is “Remove” which allows you to remove a profile from your favourites list.

More developments are on the way so keep an eye on the blog for the latest updates.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Reporting a profile

One thing we seem to get quiet a bit feedback about from members is that there are lots of idiots, married people and scammers on the site and why don’t we do something about it. Well the truth is, where we can, we do.

Please don’t get us wrong, the site is not riddled with these types of people, the vast majority of members on the site are genuine, but there is always going to be a few that get past us and that is where you come in.

If you ever suspect a member of being a scammer, being married or if they are abusive to you please let us know, either by clicking the ‘Report Profile‘ button on their profile or by sending us an email to abuse@completelyfreedating.co.uk.

Don’t let these people ruin the site for you and the other genuine members.

All reports are taken seriously and treated in complete confidence.

Thanks

Andrew & Debbie

Popularity: 64% [?]

Join in

We would really like the Completely Free Dating community to join in with the development of the site, as we want to make it a site that services the needs of the community. There are several ways you can “join in”, these are:

1. The Blog

You can follow the blog using one of these methods:

1. Simply visit the blog site regularly.
2. Add the blog’s RSS feed to your favorite feed reader or personalised home page. The RSS feed URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/completelyfreedating/blog.
3. Subscribe to get email alerts when there are new posts. You will find the email subscription box on the right of every page.

We also welcome comments on every blog post, so please feel free to leave a comment.

2. The forums

The site forums are a great place to get involved with discussions on the site and make your voice heard. Come along to the forums, take a look around and either comment on an existing topic or start a new one of your own.

3. Make suggestions

We are always looking for new ideas from the site community and are open to any suggestions. Obviously we cannot carry out every suggestion, but if it is good idea and we have the resources to do it, we will.

4. Spread the word

As a free community site we have limited resources to advertise the site. If you would like to help the site and spread the word we would really appropriate that, even if you only tell one person, it all helps. If however have your own website, blog, myspace page, etc… then please see our “Link to us” page for details on how you can link to us.

UK – http://www.completelyfreedating.co.uk/Link-to-us.cfm
Ireland – http://www.completelyfreedating.ie/Link-to-us.cfm

Thanks for your time.

Andrew.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Welcome and about us

Introduction

The first thing we would like to do is welcome everyone to our new blog. The blog is going to be the place to follow if you want to keep up-to-date with everything we are doing at Completely Free Dating and have the option to give your opinion on the site and new developments we are working on.

We would like to tell you a little about Completely Free Dating, how it came about, what the blog is for and what you can expect from the blog in the future.

History

The first Completely Free Dating site was launched in the UK on September 2007 after several months of hard development work by husband and wife team, Andrew and Deborah. The idea for the site came about after several friends who had been using online dating services happened to mention how fed up they where using pay for dating sites with varying degrees of success, but having to pay for the pleasure. They couldn’t understand why online dating seemed to be the only online service you actually had to pay for to get a half decent site, unlike services such as Facebook, MySpace and Google which where all free to use as the end user.

Andrew, who’s background is a web application developer had a think about this, did some research and decided he could probably put together a decent dating website and so set about creating it. Whilst Andrew created the code behind the site, Deborah spent time creating content for the site and working out exactly how the site should be run to make sure a good level of service quality was maintained. So in September 2007, with absolutely no spending budget at all Completely Free Dating was put live and the real hard work began, marketing!!!

By the beginning of 2009 Completely Free Dating was going strong and was gaining a good amount of new members every day. We decided that a re-design of the site was required to update its look and feel but also to add new functionality and bring the site forward. The re-designed site was launched on the 1st April 2009 and was received extremely well by existing and prospective members alike. We then decided to push forward even more into new markets, starting with the Irish Republic and on the 21st of July 2009 Completely Free Dating Ireland was launched.

Both Completely Free Dating UK and Completely Free Dating Ireland are still run entirely by us alone with no outside assistance.

This Blog

For some time now we have wanted to engage closer with our members and we feel that this blog is a good way to do that. Here we will be give you an insight into how the site is run, the decisions we have made about new developments and give you the opportunity to comment on this and give us your opinion (which is really important to us). We will also inform you about any new content we add to the site and from time to time give comment on things happening within the dating industry.

The future

We have a solid list of developments that we want to complete over the next 6 months or so, some of which will affect you as a user and others will help us continue to market the site and obtain new members. We will start to outline some of the more important developments here over the next couple of weeks, but we are always looking out for good ideas. If you have any suggestions on things you would like to see added to the site or existing features you would like changed, please feel free to leave us a comment below.

Thank you for taking the time to read about us.

Andrew & Deborah

Popularity: 97% [?]