HER was one of the few dating platforms for the LGBTQ community in 2016. The HER team learned quickly that we were having the same challenges that other dating apps had--the total of matches was high but users were not sending messages. We wanted to know: If they matched, why didn't they talk to each other?
I thought the best way to understand the users' behavior was by conducting interviews. I was very curious to learn what drives users to talk with other users on a dating app.
I interviewed users who had a large number of matches that had not led to conversations. I discovered two main reasons why users did not start a conversation after matching with another user.
01. They waited for the other person to make the move
Most of the users expressed that whoever triggered the match was the person who should start the conversation. This was very ambiguous since both users needed to make "a move" to match.
02. Instant notifications were forgettable
Other users mentioned that they forgot to reply after receiving the in-app notification and checking the message with the match.
After reflecting on these findings, I considered the factors that help people interact with each other in real life. How could we break the ice between HER’s users and help them to start a conversation?
I had one idea that could potentially solve the problem: a conversation starter. If the matched users did not start a conversation within 24 hours of matching, HER would automatically send a message with a question. This way, users would remember they matched with someone and could easily answer the question and kickstart a conversation.
With this idea in mind, we moved to start testing and see the results.
After implementing the conversation starter, the number of conversations increased by 20%. As a result, the active users increased by 15%.
