Written by Merav Knafo | 06 February 2009

As I wrote in my previous post, PlentyOfFish.com is one of my favorite dating sites. It has great features, smart design (not pretty, but smart) and it’s highly addictive. But no site is ever perfect, so here are some of the usability mistakes I found on the site’s main features.

1. The mailbox delete link is hard to see. It’s light blue on a light blue background! It should really be a button. That’s what users expect.
   
   
2. No Next/Back links on search results. It’s much easier to click a “next” link than one of a series of numbers. Google got it right
   
   
   
   
   
3. Problems with Who’s Online. Although it’s great that this feature, which is missing from Match and Yahoo! Personals, exists on PlentyOfFish, it’s not perfect. In fact, I tend not to use it. There are a few reasons:
   • It’s unclear how the users are ordered. I assumes it’s by date of last login, but I’d prefer the default to be proximity to me, and then have the option of choosing another characteristic from a dropdown menu (such as last login, newest etc.)
   • When I reach the second page of “Who’s Online,” the format changes from gallery and I see women listed. Consistency would be better and I should be able to choose the format.
   • It would be nice to see how long the users have been online. Matchmaker.com used to show this data… and all sort of other stats about the user.
4. No Clear “Join Now” button. Visitors who come to the home page don’t see a clear “Call to action”. Maybe it’s a part of the appeal, but it’s worth testing using a clear button instead of links.
   
   
5. What are matches? It’s unclear why the people listed on the My Matches page are considered my matches. A little explanation here would help.
6. On the top menu, the “mailbox” and “Send msg” options should be next to each other. They are essentially the same feature with different views so grouping them feels natural.
7. Checkbox next to images. To make a photo the main image, I need to mark a check box. But if I can only set one photo as the main image, I should be offered radio buttons and not check boxes.
   
   
   
   
8. Limited “Viewed Me.” I like this feature, but I can only see the last few users who viewed me and not a complete list. It would be helpful if I could see all of them as well as the date/time they’ve viewed me, sorted by last viewed me. JDate offers this.
9. Register Now… and Always. I can sometimes see the “Register Now” link even though I already am registered and logged in.
10. Who’s New is hidden. This is a great feature so why hide it? I can barely see it with all the links on top. This should be much more prominent and perhaps placed next to the “Who’s online” link.

As you can see, most of these mistakes are pretty minor (except for “who’s online”), and PlentyOfFish is still the most addictive and sticky dating site on the Web today. To find out why, read my other article “Top 10 Usability Gems on PlentyOfFish”.

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Big problems on Plenty of Fish
written by Kerry Gray, February 23, 2009

My friends and I all had problems with profiles spontaneously being deleted. One problem was I helped "non computer literate" friends create their account, and if it was logged into from my computer and theirs it was deleted. These were legitimate dating accounts with their own email addresses, and very real contacts and friends. Gone immediately, without warning. Then, the site has ZERO customer service, ZERO help for problems. We would rather pay for a better site that helps its customers than use the POF site that just says Tuff Shit.

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Thumbnail usability, and a fix in Firefox
written by Lil' D, March 05, 2009

Hey guys, great article.

I was fed up with one usability element of PoF: the tiny thumbnails. So I wrote a little script to make them much bigger:

http://areyoufromtheinternet.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/bigger-thumbnails-in-pof/

Let me know your thoughts.

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Nice idea
written by Merav Knafo, March 05, 2009

I like the idea of your add-on! However as a web developer it would be a bad idea for me to add tools that make the websites look different than what most people see, this way I can find all those little problems!! But for most people it sounds like a good thing.

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