eHarmony’s Advantage

On dating sites, men, more so than women, are photo search crazy. Men typically have a higher tendency to search for profiles with photos because of the importance placed on physical beauty. Often, many base their decision to email a member solely because of a photo that piques their interest. On World Singles sites, we see a significantly larger % of women email men who do not have pictures than men who email women without pictures. If more people actually read profiles, there would be less emails sent to women who clearly articulate what they are and are not looking for in a partner.

A few years back when I was single and readily used dating sites for business and pleasure, I really enjoyed how eHarmony’s system de-emphasized looks/photos by preventing members from manually searching for photo profiles. Matches delivered to members of eHarmony were based on lifestyle, morals, outlooks and how you live; they were not based on the “ideal” physical traits that we seek in partner. It was a refreshing approach and many of the matches that I met were people that I could develop a friendship with, even if we lacked that physical romantic spark.

I have not read any studies to support my claim, but I feel that religious men and women may place less emphasis on physical beauty than they do on other relationship dynamics like lifestyle, faith, morals, etc. Of course, a physical spark is one of many dynamics that draws us to someone of the opposite/same sex, but where does it rank in the priority list? Is physical attraction more or less important for some people? Yes, I think so…

If my premise is right that physical attraction is not as important for devout Christians than non religious folks, this bodes well for eHarmony, a site that has deep Christian roots. eHarmony seems to have very strong brand loyalty among the Christian community. I think that the recent controversy of eHarmony’s policy for banning gays from joining the site, only entrenched their popularity in the Christian community and helps differentiate them from competitor Chemistry.com. Sure, the bad press hurts them with fringe users, but it solidifies their appeal to core users who I am sure are predominantly single Christians. I have no doubt that women will love Chemistry.com b/c it’s everything that Match.com is not, a yuppie meat market, but I am not so sure that the average guy who is photo search happy would embrace Chemistry as quickly….unless he is Christian of course =)

Life is good.