Give us a bit of your background. Who are you, and what was your situation before building Dating Kit?
Hi there, I'm Steven! A graphic designer and UI developer based in the UK. I started my journey back in 2007 designing and building websites. Over the years I've worked on many projects across different industries and with some well known brands both at home and internationally. I've always loved creating things and have built a number of side projects, Dating Kit being one of them. Dating Kit is also one of my largest side projects and has potential to become my full time job in the future.
What is Dating Kit, what problem does it solve, and how does it work?
Dating Kit provides a fully managed white label dating site solution. We include premium features, customer support, billing and a software platform that's optimised for conversions and user interaction.
We discovered a lot of off the shelf white label dating sites would set things up and then that's it. This left a lot of people wondering how things work, unable to get started, and having no idea what to do next. Dating Kit makes it really easy to set up a white label dating site, all you need is a domain name to get started. We then take care of all the hard work that users are usually stuck with, leaving them free to build their brand and promote their site.
What led you to build Dating Kit?
The idea for Dating Kit started to come together when we heard the online dating space was growing (Around 2017/2018) and wondered if there was an opportunity there. After doing some research we noticed a market that wasn't being filled properly by the current big leaders.
How did you validate the idea?
We spent a lot of time browsing forums and other online communities where our target audience would gather online. We would read about grievances with the big leaders in the space and try to help out with free advice where we could. This not only allowed us to figure out where the pain points were for our users and what we could offer, but also grow our reputation in the community.
Could you describe the process of building the first version of Dating Kit?
Our first version was actually built as a Wordpress plugin to challenge the already popular 'WP Dating' which seemed to have a lot of issues for their end users. However in the first year we discovered Wordpress wasn't the right fit for all the things we wanted to achieve and we didn't want to be locked into another system, so we created our own. Our plan is to one day get back into the Wordpress space with a plugin, but using data from our own system that we have established over the years.
How competitive was your space, and what steps did you take to stand out?
The space is dominated buy less than a handful of very large companies. We were not daunted by this as they are established companies (10+ years old) and suffer from outdated interfaces and old practices so we were confident we could tidy things up to be cleaner, clearer and easier to use for our customers and the end users.
How did you launch Dating Kit and get your first customers?
As mentioned previously, we were already in the space where our ideal users would spend most of their time online. We spent time getting to know our audience and their pains with the existing industry players. When we commented we were building an alternative we had over 300 emails asking for more information about what we were offering.
Once we completed the initial build of our MVP we selected a mix of newcomers and seasoned users to be part of our beta program (Full details of how we conducted our first beta program can be found here).
Since your launch, have you used any other marketing strategies to acquire or retain users?
Our marketing has been very minimal since we launched as most of our users, after the initial batch, come through referrals. We launched an affiliate program a couple of years back which has been the key to driving more growth with limited marketing from us. While we do have a social media presence on most of the large social networks, they are not utilised as much as they could be. While our affiliates are driving traffic there isn't a need to spend time on those other platforms just yet.
How is Dating Kit performing now, and what are your future plans?
We saw quite a lot of growth in end users between 2020-2022 where people were more interested in making connections during lockdown, but as you can imagine we are now past that peak. We are still seeing a good number of users registering each week though. Our plans for the next year involve improving user interactions and conversions across our products.
What key lessons or insights have you gained from starting Dating Kit?
Understanding customer needs is crucial in deciding what to build and when. The success of Dating Kit relied on deep insights into what dating site owners needed to run and manage their site, and what end users want in terms of interacting with potential matches. Listening to feedback, adapting the product, and constant review and iteration helped shape a better product for us to offer.
One important insight was realising the importance of focusing on a niche market for individual dating sites. We found general dating sites didn't get as much interaction as a "60+ dating" for example. This lead us to create niches and allow our dating site owners to control the focus of their site, in turn increasing their profit. The broader dating market is saturated, so by targeting a specific audience we found a way to let our users stand out and attract a dedicated end user base.
Start small and iterate often. Building the first version of Dating Kit wasn't perfect as it was built with Wordpress, but getting it out quickly and collecting feedback helped pivot in the right direction to a faster, easier to develop tech stack. Now we have all the key features for our product and our developer experience makes it easy to create a new feature when the need arises.
A good SaaS product should also benefit from a strong community. As mentioned, we engaged users in their space often, offered value beyond the product, and built relationships that made it easier to onboard and retain customers.
What advice would you give to aspiring founders who have tried a few small SaaS businesses but haven't found any success yet?
Keep at it. Think back to when you were last stuck with something and didn't give up. You figured it out in the end right? Not every marketing tactic or feature deploy works, but the key is to keep testing, learning, and pushing forward.
Where can people learn more about you and your work?
For more about Dating Kit visit - https://datingkit.io
If you're interested in my work check me out at https://stevennoble.co.uk or my marketing/design agency project at https://graphicscove.com.
