Profiles

Improving views on your dating profile is mostly dependent on your headline, profile photo, and any miscellaneous content available at first glance.

Your headline: your headline should represent you in some way. If brevity is not your forte, try to find a way to summarize the content of your profile. Are you an edgy movie buff? A concert pianist with an eye for fashion? By picking out a few key aspects of your profile, you can give users a quick glimpse into your life.

Warning: Avoid words like “normal” and “ordinary” -- both in your headline and profile in general. “I’m just a normal guy/girl” doesn’t tell the reader anything relevant about you. If you’re anything other than normal, it’s sure to come across in your profile without your disclaimer. Likewise with words like “fun” and “easy going.” Instead of describing yourself in these ways, try to think of concrete examples. Everyone has different ideas of what it means to have fun. Are you fun because you like to play sports? Are you fun because you’re really into board games? Because you like to go to the museum? Or hang out at the beach? By explaining what activities you enjoy, the reader and potential match will be better able to determine what kind of “fun” he or she is interested in having with you.

Profile photo: having a profile picture will increase your profile views exponentially. If you don’t have one on hand, ask a friend to shoot a picture for you, preferably with natural light for a clear shot. Avoid pictures that are blurry or grainy. Headshots usually work best for the profile picture, as they show off your best and most accessible feature: your face!

Depending on the dating website you use, some sites will show miscellaneous parts of your profile in the search results. Use it as an opportunity to put your best foot forward and make sure it counts! If there’s something particularly special or interesting about you, make sure you include it in the space viewable in the search results to pique the interest of viewers.

We all want to portray ourselves in the best light possible when it comes to online dating. After all, the more attractive you seem online, the greater your chance of receiving responses and garnering more dates.

The problem is, many people fudge the truth in order to get more responses. So how do you know what information is real and what's not when you're looking at potential matches?

OkCupid recently did a study of its membership base to determine what online daters are most likely to lie about, along with the likely reasons why. Here's what they found:

• Online daters tend to lie about height. Generally, men are two inches shorter than the height they claim to be. The surprising statistic OkCupid also noted was that women tend to lie about their height just as frequently, although shorter women tend to get more attention. The study noted women under 5'4" get 60 more responses per week than their 6-foot counterparts.

• A second popular lie is about income. Generally, men and women both exaggerate their income levels by about 20%. However, men have more incentive to lie. Their response rates increase significantly when they claim to make more than $100K as opposed to a more modest salary. Also, after 23 years of age, if a man is making less than $40K, likely he won't be getting much response at all.

• The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date. Typically, people seem to be posting recent pictures on OkCupid, the median date being about 92 days old. However, more than a third of the most attractive photos on the site are over a year old. Also, older singles tend to post older pictures. Men and women over 30 tend to post pictures that are a year old or more.

For more on this dating site, you can read our OKCupid review.

Have you been told to keep your shirt on/button it up/have someone else take your photo/look away from the camera?

In all of the instances above, OKCupid is shutting you down. The popular online dating site decided to dig into its members' profile pictures and see if there was a story to be told. Indeed, there was, but certainly not the story the folks at OKCupid expected. The study's data covers 18 to 31-year-old only and reviewed over 7,000 photographs to come to a few conclusions. Grab a coffee (and maybe a note pad) so you can soak-up everything OKCupid shares and maybe make some meaningful changes to your own online dating profile.

Smiling is Good, but There's Something Better

We all get that smiling is the key for any happy photo, but OKCupid discovered that there's one more thing that takes a smiling photo to the next level: the flirty look. The ideal look for profile pictures that work is a smiling, flirty face looking directly into the camera...for ladies. Eye contact is important and enhances a woman's attractiveness, while the flirty look seems to send things over the top. On the contrary, men were found to be most attractive in photos where they look away from the camera and do not smile.

Self-Portraits Sell

Who knew that the "MySpace" style profile picture would be successful? Certainly not OKCupid. But according to their study, these pictures pull more weight than one might think. The self-shot photos for both men and women garnered more bites (new contacts) per month than regular photos taken by someone else. They initially thought these surprising results (for women, at least) were purely a product of self-shots being more revealing (i.e. cleavage). Then again, men don't have (or should not have) cleavage, so that was out. Perhaps it's simply a factor of self-shots being honest. They're not edited or photoshopped and you know they're probably current photos. Oh - and an interesting tidbit: guys, you can take your shirts off, but the ladies start losing interest (sharply) after they turn 19.

Beauty May Be Only Skin-Deep?

"Keep your clothes on." We ladies have heard that repeatedly when it comes to out online dating profile pictures, right? Have a seat. Get ready for convention to be challenged. OKCupid says that profiles that include a cleavage shot, regardless of the member's age, get more pings than those profiles without. Shocking! Be sure to check out the charts in this section of the report, as a woman who always thought that showing a little "down there" always meant I didn't value myself "up there," I'm going through a paradigm shift here.

But wait - the report dup a little deeper with the "cleavers." They modeled potential conversations held the keepers of the cleavage shot (in comparison to those with other types of photos and discovered...those members with "more interesting" photos were more likely to have enduring conversations (information based on the number of back and forth messages and the type of photos in a member's profile).

OK, so all may not be lost below or above the chest, but maybe a little more skin can't hurt?

OK - Show Your Face. Or Not?

We've been forever told to show our faces in our online dating profile photos. Let people see what you look like. Make sure they know it's YOU. But OKCupid discovered a very interesting tangent in their recent study: no face can be great if you give them something else to look at. An intriguing photo that's a bit quirky can beg conversation and in the long run, prove itself just as powerful as a full-face profile picture. Who knew, right? Maybe that odd little picture your friend snapped of your next or your series of self-portrait in shoe...potential online dating profile pictures, all of them!

To read the complete report, OKCupid's blog and to find out more about this dating site, read our review of OKCupid.

I found a news item on the eHarmony blog that was interesting. Researchers at UC Berkeley teamed up with a dating site to find out how important the photo headshot is for a dating profile. For both genders, researchers found that a photo in a profile was necessary for a member to be deemed attractive. Researchers also found that participants of the study said that the actual content of the profile was then used to determine if the member in the profile was a possible match and deserved to be contacted. The photo is the hook, but it is the content in the profile and how the person portrayed themselves that is the deciding factor for communication.

Finally, once the two online daters met face to face, looks became the least important predictor of a long term relationship. The overall attraction and the "connection" were deemed most important.

Find out more on the eHarmony Blog. For further info about this matchmaking service, read our eHarmony review.

The winner of our Editor's Top Pick - Christian Award for 2009, ChristianCafe.com, has recently updated their dating service. Due to members requests this dating site has added additional options to the 'Children at home?' question on their dating profile. In addition to 'Yes' and 'No', members can now select 'Sometimes' and 'Weekends'.

ChristanCafe.com also have added a new question to their profile which asks members if they are willing to relocate. Answers to this question includes 'Yes', 'No' and ' Possibly'. Existing member's answers will default to 'Possibly'. Of course, existing members can always update the answer by editing their profile. This new field is also searchable when you are looking for matches.

The last new update is the 'Who's Viewed Me' list is now editable. This means if you don't want others to know you've viewed their profile, you can now remove entries from their 'Who's Viewed Me' lists. This is done on the Profile Settings page which is accessible from the Profile menu.

To find out more about this dating site, read our [staticpage: review of ChristianCafe.com]

eHarmony has a few updates planned for the profile page which members should be able to see any day now.

The first change is photo thumbnails will be twice the size on profiles. This allows you to view matches in more detail without entering the actual photo album. The slideshow in the photo album also received an update giving users a more cinematic experience.

Members now can also easily see how their profile looks to others on eHarmony. Just visit the "About Me" tab and click on "View your profile as others see it".

The profile layout also has been approved. Overall width size has been increased by about a third. Profile questions have been moved around with the "What are you most passionate about?" and “What is the most important thing you are looking for in a person?” answers appearing at the top, right next to the profile's main thumbnail image. Color changes are also apparent with a dark gradient blue of eHarmony's homepage replacing the light blue color in the older profile.

The last thing to see a change is the communication stages. The communication process has been simplified slightly (not sure quite how yet) and the actual communication flow has been clarified more with improved messaging between each stage. FastTrack also has been renamed to "eHarmony Mail" to help describe the process better.

For more on the story read the eHarmony Blog and to find out further information about this dating site, check out our [staticpage: eHarmony.com review].