Earlier this week, WhiteLabelDating.com, attended iDate’s European Focus and Mobile Technology conference in the beautiful city of Cologne.
Despite a strong focus on the German and DACH dating markets, the conference delivered some valuable insights that can be applied across other territories. As with iDate LA, there was a strong focus on mobile, with predictions that mobile dating traffic will overtake web-based applications in the near future.
When targeting internationals markets, numerous panellists highlighted the importance of localisation; whether it’s in terms of homepage style, prices and payment solutions or local language and culture. In addition, Online Personals Watch Mark Brooks, shared some insightful research identifying that the use of the word ‘location’ deters women when online dating; ‘vicinity’ is less direct and works much more efficiently according to the research (although it was unclear as to which country or market this research was taken from).
Monica Whitty (University of Leicester) and Tim Ford (SOCA) spoke on online dating fraud, highlighting that scammers are getting cleverer and activity is increasing. The pair called on the industry to do more to fight this problem. WhiteLabelDating.com work closely with SOCA to assist them in understanding the methods used by scammers in the online dating sector. Scamalytics were also at the show, showcasing their anti-scammer prevention software.
As always with iDate, there were some great networking opportunities and it was great to see some familiar faces, as well as some new ones. Thanks, iDate, for an interesting and insightful conference.