After taking the plunge into the online dating pool, that all important first step of actually writing a dating profile can seem daunting. “Where do I even start?” I hear you ask. Well, the first thing to remember is not to overthink it. Think about introducing yourself in your online dating profile in the same way that you would if you were meeting someone for the first time in a bar… But with extra opportunities! Remember, this is your first chance to make a good impression.

Here are my five key pieces of advice for creating the perfect dating profile.

1. Keep it simple.

Keep your profile text simple and don’t give too much away; in the early stages of introduction, daters are simply looking for common ground. Start off by going into a little detail about yourself. Are you single, divorced, widowed? What do you do for a living? What do you like to do in your spare time? Lay the foundations for those introductory conversations and first dates where you can get down to the nitty gritty.

2. Make your dating profile unique to you.

Your profile needs to stand out from the crowd, so let your personality shine through. A touch of humour goes a long way, so make a joke, add in a witty remark or point out your favourite blog or TV show. It’s a conversation starter and shows you as the interesting person you really are!

3. Remember to spell check.

Whilst your online dating profile is not the place for formalities and ‘kind regards’, a study from OKCupid showed that bad spelling and grammar are a major turn off. Adopt a chatty, friendly tone and write in a similar style to the way that you would speak to someone you’d just met. But, always, always, remember to spell check.

4. Tell everyone what you’re looking for from online dating.

Let other members know who you want to meet on the site. Are there any specific requirements that you’re looking, or not looking, for? It’s a good idea to politely identify whether you want to meet people within a particular age range, or with certain habits (non-smoking, for example). That way, you’ll avoid any awkward “thanks, but no thanks” messages later down the line.

5. Don’t write your life story.

Don’t make things harder for yourself by attempting to write everything that you can possibly think of  about yourself in one go. Keep it short and sweet. Too much information can be overwhelming; the idea is to leave them wanting more. A few hints about your personality and interests should be enough to pique interest and entice other members to strike up a conversation with you.

Whether you want to get tapping those fingers on your own, or with the help of the ‘Profile Wizard’ to guide you through (available on dating sites powered by our WhiteLabelDating.com platform), follow my simple advice and watch those messages come flooding in! Happy dating!

The post 5 steps to the perfect online dating profile appeared first on Global Personals.

Spending their working day giving lifestyle advice to the likes of Holly Willoughby and Kerry Katona, The Speakmans made the decision to move into the realms of online dating to further extend their service offering directly to the consumer, in line with their motto, ‘changing lives for the better’.

With large and active social media communities including over 800,000 Twitter followers, a regular TV spot on ITV’s This Morning and a guest column in Love it! magazine, The Speakmans were well positioned to utilise their existing solid fan base to create a successful dating site. Cross-promoting their dating site over a number of channels, the husband and wife duo have seen rapid growth in the number of new members registering to SpeakmanDating.com since launch.

Of their dating site, Nik and Eva said:

“When we met, our life dramatically changed for the better as life takes on a whole new meaning when you have someone to share it with. Over twenty years later we are happier than we have ever been as our love for each other continues to grow. Our goal is to help you find the love that we have, right here on our dating site.”

The Speakmans are a great example of the opportunities for brands and personalities to engage and extend their communities with online dating, whilst exploring additional revenue channels.

Welcome on board, Nik and Eva Speakman.

The post Partner Focus: The Speakmans appeared first on Global Personals.

After trialling new recipes, frantically gathering ingredients and oh-so-carefully transporting their culinary delights along the treacherous journey from kitchen to car to office, our team of star bakers assembled their goodies at Global HQ to await the critique of a hundred hungry Globalites. I think it’s safe to say that every single bite was a haven of deliciousness.

From a Victoria Sponge, to Mini Victoria Sponges, to Marshmallow Krispie Hearts, to Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Bites, to Peanut Butter and Almond Mini-cupcakes, our array of baked treats sold like hot… cakes? With a minimum donation set at just 50p a cake, our Globalites were generous as ever; we raised a total of £160.38!

Now for the serious bit…

WhiteLabelDating.com Partner Managers, Gary Taylor and David Adams, will be cycling 100 miles on 1st June in aid of British Heart Foundation. All proceeds from the Global Giving Bake Sale will go towards sponsoring David and Gary. If you’d like to make a contribution, head to their Just Giving page.

To find out more about fundraising at Global Personals, go to our Global Giving page.

The post The Great Global Giving Bake Off appeared first on Global Personals.

I first joined Global Personals as part of the Customer Retention team. It takes a special mix of skills to adapt to the individual needs of every customer to help them make the most out of our sites, which means that it isn’t always easy. But with the support, knowledge and shared expertise from the rest of the Retention team, it wasn’t long before I was helping the team hit our targets. The job itself was really enjoyable, and I had fun competing with myself to try and better my previous achievements. And yet, after a while, I felt it was time for a new challenge.

Then along came the Business Development role with WhiteLabelDating.com. Business Development is very important for a business, particularly in an industry as vast and fast-growing as dating – which means huge responsibility!  It looked like a fantastic challenge, so I dived in head first.

I’m really enjoying getting stuck in, and my new team have been endlessly helpful. Every day is different in Biz Dev; I never know who I’m going to speak to, what part of the world they’ll be from or what kind of site they’ll want to set up. From media brands and publishers, to affiliates or webmasters; located anywhere from the UK, USA, South Africa or Australia to name but a few; the dating business offers no ends of variety!

During my time in the job so far, I’ve done a lot of different things that I never thought I would do. I now take partners through every step of setting up a new dating site, helping them to decide what niche, market or even territory to target. I follow up new and existing leads, to encourage them to join the WhiteLabelDating.com platform, as well as analysing how we can help them define their dating or lifestyle brand to set them apart within their own niche or territory. There is no limit to dating; absolutely anyone can set up a successful site with the right expertise, meaning that there’s no limit to sources of new business. I also regularly catch up with existing partners to see how they’re settling in with the WhiteLabelDating.com platform, discussing how they can continue to improve their sites.

The Biz Dev role is everything I hoped it would be and I am lucky enough to work in a fantastic team, who are always on hand to help each other out. I can see myself in this role for many years to come and look forward to helping the well oiled machine that is WhiteLabelDating.com, to “conquer the world!”

To find out how you can join our team, head to our Careers page.

The post Supporting career development appeared first on Global Personals.

Google Squared is a course led by Google, in partnership with Impact and the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising). It’s aimed at empowering the next generation of leaders to drive the digital industry revolution, and I am lucky enough to have been selected to take part… So, no pressure then!

The course is aimed at bringing together a selection of people from very different backgrounds, but with one common passion: digital. To have been selected to attend a course of this calibre, with its industry-leading speakers and mentors, is a great opportunity which I hope will have endless positive repercussions for myself and for Global Personals.

With a strong focus on leadership, development and management on one side, and digital marketing strategy and practical skills on the other, the Google Squared curriculum is as intense as it is comprehensive. The idea is to learn by doing: all projects are collaborative, multi-disciplinary and mentored by industry specialists.

Across six weeks, Google Squared will see me take on a series of different projects. Not only will those include enhanced training in my own specialist field, PPC, but I’ll also be spending time working with other digital experts to create an online business from scratch, in just 38 hours.

I’ll also spend a week back in the office, at Global Personals Windsor HQ, where I’ll put my new knowledge of the latest, cutting-edge digital trends into practice in the context of our business. Finally, I’ll head off for one last week of revision and planning for the future.

The part of the course I find most interesting is its focus on the realisation of these newly acquired skills in the workplace to ensure a long term impact for the digital industries. It’s also sure to be a great accelerator for my entrepreneurial skills, which I hope will allow me to contribute some fresh digital ideas of great value on my return to the office.

It’s going to be an excellent experience, and even if my boss says he expects me to sweat, I can’t wait to start and get the best of it!

The post Nuria leads the way with Google Squared appeared first on Global Personals.

What do you do?

I work as a WhiteLabelDating.com Partner Manager within the B2B team. I look after a variety of partners, helping them market their sites to effectively maximise revenue potential. And with over 100 partners to keep an eye on, no two days are ever the same!

How long have you been with the company?

Just over 3 months so far, although it’s flown by. I’m still learning new things every day, from coding (which is something I never expected to do) to site design. I think it’s fair to say my eyes have been well and truly opened to the niche dating sites market.

What did you want to be growing up?

To the horror of my parents, the generic answers like space man, sports star or celebrity never even crossed my mind. At the age of 6, there was only one job for me… dustbin man.

How would your work mates describe you in 3 words?

Think before speaking, (they’ll understand).

If you could have a super power, what would it be?

It would have to be super speed. I’d love to say that it would be for the benefit of others, but no doubt it would end up being used for selfish, mundane tasks (or taking on Usain Bolt).

Biggest inspiration? (Excluding family.)

Michael Johnson has to be up there; for the way that he dominated his sport for so long and for his attitude, which made him an ambassador for the next generation of athletes. Other than that, I’d have to say Ranulph Fiennes – because if anyone can run 7 marathons in 7 days across 7 continents, four months after having a double heart bypass, it’s pretty hard not to find them inspirational.

Marmite. Love or hate?

LOVE IT. End of.

What are your 3 favourite websites and why? (Excluding us!)

1. BBC Sport – Looking at the daily gossip column to find out the latest transfer news, no matter how unreliable it is, is part of my daily routine.
2. Ebay – You can pretty much find anything you’ve ever wanted on here. Unfortunately for me, that meant buying an old, second-hand motorbike at the age of 17. Let’s just say that just because it looks pretty, doesn’t mean you look good having to get off and walk it home.
3. YouTube – It keeps me entertained for hours on end, whether it’s looking at the best goals in history, Mike Tyson’s best knock outs or how to build your own bicycle. (Apparently I have a lot of spare time on my hands.)

A secret or fact that no one at work knows?

When I was at uni, I decided it would be a good idea to get my ear pierced; which involved a safety pin, one housemate, and half a bottle of wine. It’s safe to say the “diamond heart” miraculously vanished after three days, when I was left with a swollen ear and a lot of abuse from the local Geordies on a Saturday night out.

What item at work could you not live without? (Excluding your computer)?

When I first walked into the office, I wasn’t much of a tea drinker (at all) but after 3 months it’s part of my every day routine.

The post Spotlight: Frazer! appeared first on Global Personals.

What do we do?

It’s our job to ensure that the WhiteLabelDating.com product is engaging, innovative and provides our users with a fantastic experience. We focus on developing the platform, bringing new ideas to the table and ensuring that the dating application is of a high quality.

As a growing business, it’s important that we work to align business objectives and user goals, to create a product that delivers consumer satisfaction and business success.

What makes a successful UX designer?

It takes a unique mix of skills to be a good User Experience Designer. Firstly, the job requires an understanding of human psychology and the ability to empathise with the user. A key part of any project is pinning down why users behave the way they do. Once you’ve got a handle on that, you can create a good hypothesis to enable you to adapt user experience to best suit the needs of your audience. In addition, knowledge of the basic principles of graphic design (layout, colour and typography) is vital.

A User Experience designer’s job is to sit at an intersection between the business, its users and its technology. We bring together all areas together in our product workshops, which are held at the beginning of every project; so mediation skills are a must.

A blend of Partner Account Managers, Customer Care Executives, Engineers and Project Managers have the opportunity to put forward their ideas for each project, but this isn’t just a case of handing them a blank piece of paper and demanding a list of suggestions! We use a range of creative thinking and ideation techniques to extract, validate and prioritise ideas from the participants in these fun and insightful sessions.

What does a typical day look like in User Experience Design?

Getting stuck into the product workshops held by the User Experience Design team.

As the Head of UX, I typically start the day by catching up on emails and writing my to-do list for the day. The team will then hold a scrum or stand-up where we’ll discuss the progress of the projects we’re currently working on, next to our large whiteboard – a hub of mind maps, ideas, sketches, research and mock-ups.

I will usually be involved in a number of project or team meetings, spent discussing the finer details of a current project or planning for the future. During the early stages of a project, we also hold stakeholder interviews, workshops and conceptualisation sessions to gather objectives and to develop ideas.

Favourite Tools

On any one day, the User Experience Design team work with dozens of different tools. From prototyping software, to chat rooms and communication tools, my favourites include:

Our new Thinking Wall that helps us form ideas.

Thinking Wall – A new addition to our office space but something we couldn’t live without. The Thinking Wall dominates a large space at the back of our office. It allows us to quickly map out ideas, by sketching them across the wall and pinning up snippets of research, and mockups, as the product solution grows.

 Creative Suite – Adobe’s suite of products are used every day, mostly for producing final designs but also for quickly developing ideas as mockups and wireframes.

Textmate – Both Textmate and Sublime are the text editors of choice amongst the UX designers and developers at Global Personals. The bundles are excellent and cover pretty much anything you might require.

Virtual Box – We run our entire development stack as a pre-packaged virtual machine, allowing us to get started quickly with minimal fuss.

Omnigraffle – This is less of a mainstay across the team but still a favourite of mine. Omnigraffle is an excellent wireframing and diagramming tool and with plenty of device specific templates available, it’s quick and easy to mock-up an idea.

What’s coming up

The User Experience and Development teams are working hard on some new product enhancements that you will start to see appearing over the coming months. We’re very excited about these changes; there’ll be some new features and some key improvements to our existing core functionality.

The life of a UX designer at Global Personals is extremely varied and it’s a really interesting role with challenging problems to solve and ambitious goals to meet. It’s a challenge we love and we hope you like the solutions that we’re developing. Watch this space for some in depth commentaries on our new features, how they work and how we arrived at the solution!

Our team is constantly expanding. If you’re looking for a User Experience job and think you could be the newest addition to our team, take a look at our latest vacancies.

The post An introduction to User Experience Design appeared first on Global Personals.

The relative calm of early April gave us the ideal opportunity to create some more tightly-targeted CRM campaigns, differing from the “one size fits all” flavour that goes hand in hand with international holidays.

We began with a super-generous offer to attract inactive members back to the sites. Results on this kind of campaign aren’t typically high; however, when someone does open an email, click-through-rates (CTRs) can be up to 3x greater than those from a standard campaign. This excellent CTR contributed to several thousand inactive users coming back to us, signing up for a full membership and re-monetising their profiles.

Towards the end of the month, geo-specific campaigns came into play with impressive discounts to celebrate Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand, Freedom Day and Workers’ Day in South Africa, Cinco de Mayo in the USA, and May Day in the UK and Ireland. Despite some glorious weather contending for users’ attention (in the UK at least!), these offers gave us a strong return, setting a positive precedent for the coming summer months.

In between offers, we took the chance to highlight some of the features on the WhiteLabelDating.com platform. With summer fast-approaching in the UK, Irish and North American networks, people will be out-and-about a lot more, meaning that this is the perfect time to remind members about our mobile dating functionality. We also told members about the importance of a complete profile, a good set of photos and video profiles, as tools to attract more attention on the sites. April also brought with it the second of our monthly “ask the expert” newsletters, and some experimental “featured member” campaigns, some of which will be making their way into the regular campaign schedule over the coming weeks.

Watch this space for news of May’s campaigns!

The post April Comms round-up appeared first on Global Personals.

What do you do?

I am Executive Assistant to Ross and Steve, the co-founders of Global Personals, and the board.

How long have you been with the company?

I’ve been here almost 9 months now.

What did you want to be growing up?

A flight attendant. Given how many times I have flown back and forth between Australia and the UK now, I couldn’t think of anything worse!

How would your work mates describe you in 3 words?

I cheated and asked one of them. His response was sparky, positive and warm – reading it back, it kind of makes me sound like a light bulb!

If you could have a super power, what would it be?

It would have to be flying. I’m currently learning the flying trapeze and it’s a pretty amazing feeling when you’re flying through the air!

Biggest inspiration? (Excluding family.)

I tend to take inspiration from those closest to me, not necessarily from just one individual or thing.

Marmite. Love or hate?

I was born in New Zealand so grew up with NZ Marmite. It’s completely different to the stuff in the UK and also tastes a lot better!

What are your 3 favourite websites and why? (Excluding us!)

1. Lakeland - I love to bake, so I’m always finding goodies that I love on here.
2. Google UK - After living in the UK for nearly 5 years and not necessarily being familiar with all things British, Google is a great friend to have when researching places to go and things to do!
3. Facebook - Living so far away from home means that Facebook is a must for a fast way to keep in touch with friends and family.

A secret or fact that no one at work knows?

It wouldn’t be a secret any more if I told you!

What item at work could you not live without? (Excluding your computer)?

My chocolate drawer!

Kirsty on the trapeze!

The post Spotlight: Kirsty! appeared first on Global Personals.

We’re expanding, rapidly. And as our business continues to grow, so does our work force. So whether you’re an extraordinary visual designer, customer care moderator, financial analyst, project manager, user experience designer or web developer, we need you!

To give you a little more insight about what life is like at Global Personals, we asked our Globalites what their favourite thing about working here is. Here’s what they said.

Sarah Iles, WhiteLabelDating.com Partner Manager

My favourite thing about working at Global is that it’s completely different to any other company. Where else would you get to work with such a wide range of partners running their own dating sites, and have the opportunity to help them grow their business from the ground up? Global is a fun, vibrant company where everyone enjoys coming into work every day and is passionate about what they do.

Brad Haverly, Financial Analyst

It’s exciting to watch Global Personals evolve and grow, whilst it continuously enhances its dating platform and explores new revenue channels. And yet all of this happens in what’s still a reasonably small company; you’re not just a number at Global, you’re an individual contributing to the success of the business.

Grant Bunyan, User Experience Designer

You don’t ride the tide at Global Personals; sun or storm, you dive in headfirst. There’s so much drive and ambition at the core of Global Personals that you can’t help but become emerged in this tsunami of success. It’s a place where you instantly feel at home, and if ever you’re stuck, the ever-swelling wealth of knowledge that the team have will quickly get you back on track.

Kriselda Rabino, Web Developer @ globaldev

Emma Inniss, Head of Customer Care

I love the culture of the company, which is really young and fun. It would be a lie if I didn’t say I loved Beer Friday too!

Louisa Muhsin, PR & Marketing Executive

It’s been amazing watching the company grow; there’s always an exciting new project being launched, with more on the horizon. Being part of such a hard-working and passionate team who like to have a laugh along the way makes it all worthwhile.

Alex Osborne, Project Manager

The atmosphere is my favourite thing about Global. It’s one of the only places I know that can maintain an upbeat atmosphere when you know for a fact that everyone is working their absolute butts off. It’s so much more motivating than stony silence and a bunch of Too-Serious Sallys.

Paul Bowsher, Senior Software Engineer @ globaldev

It’s great to be part of a growing-but-already-quite-grown-up company. It means that we’re given the time and opportunity to do things right the first time, unlike some start-ups who may rush to reach an exceptionally ambitious target, simply to get some money through the door.

For a full list of vacancies, head to our Careers page.

The post We’re hiring! appeared first on Global Personals.