1. Zoosk South Africa review: summary

Zoosk is a much heard of and long established product that is the first choice for singles . It delivers a tried and tested solution, but also a site that stays at the cutting edge with new features and mobile functionality.

The core of the brand is a matchmaking system that learns about you as you browse. The ‘behavioural matching system’ promises to more accurately match you as you express your preferences.

2. Zoosk South Africa Practical Test

The Zoosk experience test is based on thorough usage and exploration of the site. to get a full idea about the service, two profiles were created, one male and one female.

In addition, we had a look at Zoosk’s reputation online, reading through reviews and forums to get an idea how customers feel about the product.

First impressions

Zoosk has an appealing full screen home page that, with its high quality of design, instantly reassures users that Zoosk is a major brand in the online dating world. This is no lie, as Zoosk remains one of the best established companies for desktop and mobile dating.

Registration is possible through Facebook and Google+. Following a few basic questions about height and ethnicity, the rest of the data, including your profile picture, is imported.

Picture: Profile view in Zoosk Search

Your first view of the platform after registration also creates a good impression. It is well designed with the centre of the page on a new profile and the menu down the left hand side. It has a ‘social media’ style format that is designed to appeal to all ages.

Contact Test

To get an opinion of how numerous members are accessible online on Zoosk we conducted a contact score. Dating sites come in umpteen diverse shapes and sizes, but always the most key matter for the client is how many contacts he or she makes. How many folk get in contact and how many people answer to messages. Our reach score creates a value against this essential measure for every web site we review. Zoosk did very comfortably in this test. There were a whole lot of members online and it looked like a respectable spread of members over the country.

Signing up for the serivce as a man, we put out 100 contact initiations on Zoosk. This was done using a mix of all contact features. For example, by messaging, 'liking', 'winking' and sending a gift. We received 21 responses of which 7 were winks and 14 were messages. This is a decent score and shows that there is a reasonable level of activtiy on the SA version of Zoosk (the test was conducted in Cape Town). -

Profile Quality

The grade of the profiles is by and large superior. Picture calibre tends to be great and indicates a membership that looks passably advanced and computer educated . Most profiles also feature a reasonable level of information available. This is a lot to do with many accounts being coupled to Facebook or google+ in order that data is imported direct.

Zoosk also has a range of Profile confirmation choices that offer up genuine protection that the person you are looking at is honest.

Phoney profiles can be a problem for all dating services and often the test of a company is not whether they have fake profiles on their books, but how many. All the same, our impression of Zoosk was very certain in this respect. Zoosk has a truly good system of profile proofing (see features list below) and most of the profiles seemed real to us.

3. Functions and profiles on Zoosk South Africa

Zoosk’s core offering is its singular behavioural matching scheme. This is designed to learn about its customers as they search through profiles and use the service. It makes the matching process very easy and many people will be glad enough just to use this as the foundation of their search. Zoosk also provides a great deal of different features that customers can make use of. We have summarised our view of the most important ones:

Search

The search function on Zoosk is not the centrepiece of the service. Zoosk aims to furnish you with matches that are eligible, without you having to actively hunt these out or mess about with filters. Zoosk does provide for those who want to take greater command and provides a search function with lots of options. Age and location of course, but if you go to ‘advanced search’ these options extend to ethnicity, family status and more. Comprehensive

Smartpick

Smartpick sends you through recommendations that are specifically suited to you. It is a feature that delivers a bit more matchmaking to the Zoosk service in parallel with the more standard approach. These matches are based on your filled in profile or, failing that, rely on the behavioural matching system to select your dream profiles.

Picture: Smartpick on Zoosk

Profile Verification

There are lots of ways in which Zoosk attempts to verify the photos and profile information of its members. These include ‘Facebook verified’ , ‘phone verified’ - where the users has submitted a valid phone number and ‘video verification’ . This is a really great feature from Zoosk . Excellent feature.

4. Customer Friendliness on Zoosk South Africa

Customer friendliness is a very important issue for the clients of online dating sites. The extent to which dating sites respond to problems their customers have varies a great deal from one to another. How easy is it to get in touch with customer services? Does the site automatically renew subscriptions?

Picture: Customer Care contact page on Zoosk

Termination at Zoosk

Zoosk subscriptions are automatically renewed unless you actively cancel the service. This is very common (almost universal) practice amongst dating companies so we don’t score Zoosk down for this fact.

Zoosk makes cancelling your subscription easy. Whereas some dating sites make customers endure lengthy processes to cancel, Zoosk allows its customers to do this at the touch of a button. A big plus point for Zoosk.

Service and Design on Zoosk

So Zoosk is nice looking, but on the complex side. It’s abundance of features ensures it is fun to explore and play with, but it also can be a little confusing for the user. In the end most customers just want to be able to browse their match list and have a clear idea of how the system works. Zoosk gives you the sense that there are options you haven’t explored fully. So while we liked the design and look of Zoosk, we would recommend you don’t attempt to make use of every single function.

Mobile use Zoosk/The Zoosk App

Zoosk has a mobile app that is simpler and easier to use than the desktop site. We like sites that provide both good apps and desktop options. This allows you to use the service wherever you are and that you can sit down and write messages using your PC and the comfort of a full sized keyboard. 

5. Value for Money at Zoosk South Africa

Most dating companies offer a free trial of their product, but to use the service properly and communicate freely with other people you nearly always have to shell out for a Premium Account. Zoosk is no different and to communicate with your contacts, you are going to have to pay a fee. We don’t question the necessity of this. At the end of the day online daters always must pay if they want to use a quality service. Instead, we focus on how Zoosk scores on a ‘value for money’ calculation. Is it good value relative to other sites on the market?

Exclusive benefits of premium membership Zoosk

•  Unlimited write messages and read (absolutely necessary, includes chats)
• See who has visited your own profile (useful)
• Smartdate (necessary for serious dating service)

Premium Membership with Zoosk

Zoosk Premium Membership is available in three main options*:

• A 6 months subscription costs  R160 per month  (50% cheaper per month than the 1-month option)
• A 3 months subscription costs  R213 per month
• To sign up just for one month only costs  R320

*these prices were current at the time of writing, but may change

We suggest going for the 6 month offer. This comes at a big, per month, dsicount and will allow you to take your time and get the best from this service