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Online dating apps are becoming popular worldwide. As of 2022, Bumble, Tinder, and OKCupid are some of the top dating sites used.
As per research, the number of users in the online dating segment is expected to reach 440.9 million by 2027. Do you wish to build a dating app too? Well, that’s awesome!
In this blog, we shall discuss some of the best functionalities that you should include in your application. Stay with us and read on.
Before we start with the features, let us closely look at some of the best tricks that will lead to enhanced user retention for your dating application.
Quick tips to boost user engagement for your dating app
It is important for businesses to understand what a customer expects from their dating platform in order to enhance user experiences. Now, generally, when a user visits the dating site, he/she is requested to complete their profile and upload a few pictures. Next, they start looking for suitable matches based on their preferences and location. As soon as they get a match, users try to initiate conversations.
This is exactly where you can make your app stand out from the crowd.
- Most apps may only offer text exchange at this stage. But you can be a step ahead by offering audio and video calling functionalities. This would prevent them from moving to some other app to continue their conversation.
- Some in-app fun games can be included so that users stay on the application for a longer period.
- Functionalities like voice note can also get the conversation going without the need to switch to other apps.
Dating app development: 7 features to include
Geolocation, preference-based filters, robust security are some of the basic features that should be present in any dating application. If you want to beat the competition, you will have to provide a little more than this. In this section, we are going to look at the advanced features that you need to enable for your application:
1. Gamified profiles
User profile is one of the top features of any dating application. It generally consists of name, age, gender, location, and short bios. However, you need to think beyond this during your dating app development process. You can enable your customers to customize their profile via gamification. You can provide users with conversation starter templates or popular profile badges to create fun experiences and keep your users hooked to your app.
2. In-app chats
There’s no denying that instant messaging is a crucial element of any dating app. However, people find simple texts boring. Hence, it becomes essential that you offer in-app advanced texting features like image texts, video messages, GIFs, voice notes, and more. This way, your app users would not want to switch to some other messaging channel to conduct conversations. A reliable in-app chat API can help you implement the best chat features into your application.
3. Ice breaker templates
There are various instances where users find a suitable match as per their preferences but are unable to initiate conversations. This is where you can help them. You can offer pre-made conversation starter templates to enable your users to kickstart some fun interactions.
4. Voice and video interactions
We live in an age of instant audio and video calls. People like to chat with their loved ones via audio and video calls as it makes them feel more connected even if they are miles apart. Therefore, voice and video calling functionalities are a must have for your application. We recommend leveraging an in-app video calling API to integrate advanced voice and video features into your application.
5. Push notifications
Push notifications play a major role in facilitating user retention for dating apps. They help your users get alerts on receiving messages from their match. Also, push notifications are a good way to bring users back to the application from time to time. Hence, during your dating app development process, it becomes highly crucial to take push notifications into consideration.
6. In-app gaming
In-app games are a rare functionality in dating applications. But they have great potential to take your app to the next level and beat the competition in the market. Games can be a kind of ice breaker for your users. They can be a fun medium for users to interact with each other. Also, games make app users stick with your application for a longer period of time, thereby improving user retention. Utilise an in-app messaging API with gaming options to attract user attention.
7. Seamless social media integrations
Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are used by a huge chunk of the audience worldwide. It becomes essential to enable your dating app to easily get integrated with such apps. This way, users can showcase their good pictures from the social media channels directly on their profile. The unnecessary hassle of uploading new pictures and verifying them each time goes away. Moreover, social media integrations help with the identification of fake profiles and protect your users from fraud. Also, it helps users build connections based on mutual connections.
Different social media platforms have different APIs that your dating app developers can leverage. Let’s have a look at some of them.
- Facebook tends to offer the HTTP-based Graph API. It makes it easier for your app to interact with Facebook.
- Instagram provides the Basic Display API that enables your application to showcase all relevant profile details like photos and videos from the user’s IG profile.
- Spotify tends to provide a web API and enable your developers to successfully integrate the Spotify’s feature into your dating app. This way, your app users can find matches based on their music choices.
Wrapping Up
We hope our article helped you gain a fair understanding of some of the best functionalities that you must include while building your dating application. Higher engagement and higher user retention is important for the success of any app.
Both of them can be achieved with the help of a top-notch in-app messaging API. Hence, it becomes essential to seek assistance from a chat SDK that can implement all modern chat functionalities into the application. Now, wait no more. Start your dating app development process today. We wish you good luck for your app initiatives.
