Questions Dating Sites Shouldn’t Ask & Questions That Should Be Revised

Many single people across the globe use dating sites and personals to meet single people. You’d think the owners of these dating sites have your interests in mind and they do, they surely do – especially free dating sites as they’re providing you a service that you don’t have to pay for – a dating service that well, will change your life.

But there’s problems in the free dating or regular paid dating sites – yes there are problems.

It’s 2010 and it’s time the owners of these dating sites change the questions they ask you.

The questions that should be changed are during registration and of course your dating site profile questions.  Here’s what I mean.

A dating site, whether being free, paid or simply for personals, has two main objectives: that of bringing traffic of both sexes to the site and to help couples hook up, get hitched and hopefully get married – OK maybe marriage is pushing it a bit.

The second goal is to at least assist single people on going out on dates and getting to know people. Right? Right, but there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Questions About Drugs

For starters one of the questions webmasters of dating sites need to remove from their dating profile questionnaire is the question regarding drugs.

Come on webmaster, do you really believe over 50% of your members are being honest?

They aren’t.

And Mr. Webmaster, don’t you believe that’s quite a personal question?

I do and so do quite a few other people. Not only does the question beg for a lie, it also puts prospecting couples at risk of having problems in the future if the user of drugs decides to come clean; the other party may be a little hurt of upset that they were “lied to” even though they weren’t.

It’s not our responsibility as webmasters of dating sites to force people to disclose such personal information.

That information is for the private conversations and to be disclosed at the right time.

Questions About Smoking

Another question on most dating site profile questionnaires is “do you smoke?”.

This is a terrible question that only leaves the member with answering either yes or no.

Now you may think that’s not a big deal but it is.

Hear me out: as webmasters of dating sites our objective is to provide a good user experience and not hinder love in any way.

Many members of dating sites will not date a person who smokes but will definitely date someone who is “trying to quit” or “just started recently” or “just quit”.

See the difference? I’m sure you do.

The question about smoking should either be removed from dating site questionnaires or be revised with the questions above.

Many people will date someone who is trying to stop as that “trying to stop” or “quitting” displays will power and self confidence.

You can’t determine those attributes in a dating site profile if they select “yes” and if they select “no” (as I have done in the past) then they are simply fibbing.

We all know where fibbing can get you on a dating site.

Questions About Children

The last question that kills me is related to children and being a parent. The question is usually posed as “Do you have children?”

The most typical answers a member can answer are “yes” and “no”. Now that’s a problem if you ask me and other member of dating sites.

The correct set of answers one should be able to select from with respect to children are the following:

1. Yes – over 5 years old
2. Yes – over 12 years old
3. Yes – over 18 years old
4. Yes – over 24 years old
5. No

There should also be two other questions accompanying the previous one.

One should be asking if your child or children live with you or not and the other question should be how many children do you have.

The above questions are important as many members of dating sites will take the answers to these questions and base the decision as to whether they should respond to a message from them or not – or message them in general.

If I were a member of any dating sites I would most likely not consider dating someone with a child under 5 years of age (just because it would feel as if the breakup between the two is still quite fresh – too much drama for me) but how can I tell? The way most questions are posed you can’t and that ruins the whole user experience.

I hope webmasters consider these question revisions and take them to heart as eventually people will leave sites that don’t offer this type of clarity in their dating site questionnaires, and then migrate to dating sites that do.