Like Coke vs. Pepsi in the soft drink category, in the early days of online dating there was Yahoo! vs. Match. Working alongside the best talent in Silicon Valley, I helped grow the Yahoo! Personals subscription service to $100 million in revenue.
Challenge:
Back in the day Yahoo! was the 800 pound gorilla of the Internet - far bigger than Google - and offered more than 30 services, including online dating.
Yahoo! and Match were already in a fierce battle to lead the online dating category when upstart eHarmony entered promising that their personality test would lead to lasting love.
With category growth hotter than a spring break beach party in Cancun, even a small change in market share could translate into millions more - or less - in revenue.
To win the online dating wars, Yahoo! needed to not only compete with upstarts like eHarmony, but also leapfrog Match.com.
Solution:
As part of an 80-person business unit, I worked alongside some of the most talented product managers, data scientists, software engineers, and designers in the world.
Together we launched Yahoo! Personals Premier, a premium product tier featuring a science-based relationship test that defended our business against eHarmony and offered a better product than Match.com.
As our team launched new features, like a threaded message inbox and pre-written message responses, I drove engagement using house ads and an updated site tour. Perhaps most importantly, we used testing and analytics to increase our subscription page conversion rate by 30% helping us stay competitive as new contenders entered the online dating wars.
As the online dating category caught fire, new products and features, combined with rigorous testing to maximize conversion rates, enabled Yahoo! to better compete against Match.com while fighting off upstarts like eHarmony.