New Improvements at Lavalife

On my latest visit to Lavalife I've notice a few improvements. The biggest one being is a redesign of the navigation. Navigation has been simplified with the primary navigation located across the top and the secondary navigation pane located on the left side of the page. The central information window is in its own separate frame now, and allows you to scroll it up or down while the main navigation display remains at the top. Warning Tech Talk Now - This type of navigation with the use of distinct browsing frames to display the navigation and web site information was first popular with web site designers in the late nineties but for the most part disappeared due to the fact that search engines (like Google) didn't index it very well. I do find this design format works well at Lavalife since it allows the navigation to stay in one spot at all times while I scroll through the dating search results or other long pages. There is no scrolling back to the top of the page to navigate to another part of the dating site.

With the new interface, searching for singles also was over hauled. There is a simple search bar at the top which allows you to click on a number of criteria for singles like New, Online or Local. Once you have selected a search criteria your results will be displayed and from here you are allowed to refine your search even more with a simple click on the secondary search options. At any point in this process you can go into the advance search page and either refine your current search or create a new detailed search criteria which you can save for later.

Another improvement I noticed right away was, mail and instant messaging has now been centralized which makes easy viewing of all your messages from the different communities. This means you don't have to jump from the Casual Dating community, to Dating/Relationship or Intimate Encounters to access messages from these separate Lavalife communities.

Lavalife also has a real-time alert system in place now. If you get a new email or instant message request an alert will appear on the top navigation area informing you of the communication request. This catches your eye more than the previous way since it can happen at any time and not just when you go to a new page.

Other improvements include an online message forum and the group chatting feature has been updated graphically slightly and is now called Lavalife Party.

It wasn't all good news though. There seems to be a lot more of onsite advertising now. These ads appear on the side and bottom of the dating profiles search results and on the main pages of the different Lavalife communities. I do hope these disappear when you become a paying member.

One of the things I really like about Lavalife is, they allow non-paying members to reply to messages for free. While this is good for the new member checking out the service (only paying members can initiate contact) it is great for paying members since you don't have to worry about sending a message to someone who can't respond since they may only be using a trial membership. Tisk, Tisk to the other popular dating services like Match.com and eHarmony for not allowing the same thing.

For more information about this dating service, read our Lavalife Review.