New Services Need to Make a Good First Impression

(Online Dating Industry Journal) New free online dating site BePenFriends.com has just launched.  In an attempt to prevent spammers, BePenFriends.com uses a concept called "BEPcredits".  When a user signs up they are given 5 BEPcredits and a credit is taken away every time a user contacts another user.  Users can gain BEPcredits by referring their friends to the BePenFriends network. 

Kim's Comments:
In a press release by BePenFriends.com, they liken their free service to Plenty of Fish, which is also free.  While I applaud their desire to break into the marketplace, if they even want to think about being an effective competitor in the free online dating market, they first and foremost need to get someone who knows proper English grammar to write the content for their service and press materials.  In such a competitive market, you need to make a strong impact on your readers, and having site content and press materials full of grammar mistakes is not the best way to make a good first impression.  It may also be a good idea to make sure that your site logo accurately portrays the name of your site for effective branding.  On BePenFriends, the logo actually reads bPenfriends.  On a positive note, the site design is very clean and definitely has a romance feel to it. 

Comments

[Tawny]

I really like your blog...I'm bookmarking it...Keep BLOGGING!

[Bepenfriends]

HI Kim,

This is albert from bepenfriends. Thanks for writing a small peice about my website.

WEll let me clarify some points here.

I accept that the website has lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes. It is because the creator is not a avid writer. I tried to minimize the mistakes as much as possible.

we wrote those press materials with very limited resources. Not like plentyoffish who makes more dollars and also has volunteer to help the owner. We will try to remove those mistakes from the content.

Regarding Logo, It was our idea to reduce that 'e' in the name. When we spell bepenfriends, we spell as Bpenfriends, yes it has some impact on branding but what we thought is it is the way people are pronouncing.

We are rennovating the site to accomudate some more features. Thanks Kim