Lovestruck Review
Lovestruck ratings
Summary: An excellent dating site if you're a professional living in London and increasingly elsewhere.
3.8
Lovestruck.com primarily focuses on urban areas, people who work and live in big cities and busy professionals who are looking for people like them living nearby. But in just a year this site has gone through a huge transformation. It used to be just for big cities – in fact you could only log in from about seven of the biggest UK cities – and busy work professionals. These days are gone and as we can see, the site is truly blooming.
It’s definitely great for daters in the UK who want to use a local dating site instead of worldwide dating corporations… but we have to say that unfortunately Lovestruck has lost a little bit of their uniqueness and originality as well. We used to love the laidback approach of “lunch dates” – basically just finding someone nearby to have lunch with, thus taking the pressure off the whole ‘dating’ business.
Still, there’s probably a reason they got rid of that and from what we can tell, the site is now more popular than ever. They’ve gotten rid of some of the functionality but they’ve also added a whole bunch of popular features that we’ve seen on other dating sites, so it’s kind of like a big melting pot of different sites. You get a bit of everything here.
Getting started on Lovestruck
Signing up to Lovestruck is easy. The good thing about signing up is that you don’t need to spend a long time writing up your profile before you can start browsing. All you need to do, is come up with a username and password, specify the gender you’re interested in (Lovestruck also works for gay and lesbian daters), choose the area where you work and live – and that’s you sorted.
You can sign up and start browsing the profiles straight away, seeing what’s on offer and how other users have built up their profiles.
Or you could just start building up your own profile straight away as – needless to say – it increases significantly your chances of actually finding a date and in sparking their interest in you.
Your Lovestruck.com profile
And maybe it’s a good thing that you can get a little taste of things before you dig in and start putting together your profile. Lovestruck profiles are both big and compact, there’s a lot of boxes to tick, a lot of stuff to write – not that it’s a complete must, but if you’re that type of a person who really likes to fill in every box, you’re going to need some time to get it all sorted.
Writing a narrative about you is generally the hardest bit on an online dating site. You know you have to sound clever and funny and yet true to yourself therefore you are probably tempted to write something along the lines of: If you want to know more about me, just ask. Well, don’t! We can’t advise you strongly enough not to write such an intro – there are hundreds if not thousands of intros like that on online dating sites and we honestly don’t think that anyone would be very interested in ‘asking more’ after reading something as bland as that. There has to be SOMETHING that you can say about yourself. Successful online dating is all about knowing how to stand out and catch someone’s eye.
One thing we should point out is that Lovestruck proofread users’ profiles carefully and they have their own rules one must adhere to. All profiles are carefully processed before they go live. And while this might seem annoying in the beginning, it really helps to keep out the cheats and scammers.
Another good thing that Lovestruck now offers is verification through your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account. You can also immediately see, which members have been verified through that – not that it’s complete proof that they’re honest but as close as you can get in this modern world.
You can obviously upload a photo – and we cannot advise doing that strongly enough – and if you’re a paid member, you can add and view multiple photos. There is also an option of hiding your photo from users other than your favourites thus narrowing the chances that you will be seen when you don’t want to be seen. You can also use your Facebook photos in your profile, it’s easily done by pressing just one button.
One more thing – there is an option to make your photos and “narrative” visible only to those members who you have “favourited”.
Design and functionality
Like I said – Lovestruck profiles are really full of information, facts and figures – that is, if they’re filled in correctly, although from our own experience, very few members actually tick every box. One thing that Lovestruck doesn’t do as opposed to a lot of other dating sites these days is telling you how compatible you’re likely to be with your match. But maybe it’s a good thing – who knows? There’s been a lot of research about the compatibility features on dating sites and the jury is still out. It’s not a foolproof way of finding your true love.
Two new-ish features Lovestruck has added are Date Ideas and Events. Under the first people can just add their ideas for possible dates to a huge list, from where you can pick and choose those you like. The other is Lovestruck’s own little endeavour to get people out of the online dating world and into the real dating scene. They regularly hold different activity and leisure events – some paid, some free, where all Lovestruck members can sign up.
To be honest, we’re not crazy about the design of the site. There’s a lot of stuff squeezed into that same page and it’s a little hard to grasp and find your way around the site immediately – what with all the “date ideas” and “events” and everything. Still, these are useful additions so we’re not quibbling too much.
If you’re a paying member, there is also an option of visiting all the profiles “incognito” – that means there will be no sign of you visiting someone’s profile so you can snoop around anyone’s page as often as you wish without worrying that you’ll scare them off or seem like a crazy stalker. After all, we all know how tempting it is to visit someone’s profile several times a day when you’re really into them. You can also hide the data of when you were last online – a handy little feature in itself.
There’s also a mobile version of LOvestruck and an Iphone/Android app.
How to communicate
Getting in touch with other members is easy. There’s winking and there’s emailing. That’s it. No chats or complicated instant messaging systems. All easy and straightforward. What is important to know is that in some of the Lovestruck city sites messaging (reading and replying) is free for unpaid members, in bigger ones (like London) you have to pay in order to do that.
Free vs Paid site
First of all, the amount of how much you need to pay for subscription depends on where you live and work. Obviously London prices are much higher than those from smaller cities. For example, one month for a Londoner costs £39 while Edinburgh daters can use it for much less – only £19.
Members of Lovestruck can obviously send and receive unlimited messages – that’s nothing new, most paid dating sites do that. But in addition to that, free members are not able to see members’ photo albums. Of course, they still get to see a photo, just not the whole album.
Paid members also enjoy some other privileges, like keeping their online status and who they have viewed private, they can also see who has viewed and/or favourited them and they can either boost or hide their profile in Lovestruck search. What’s more, they can get discounted entry to Lovestruck events!
Conclusion
If you’re a patriot who wants to promote and support UK businesses we can warmly recommend Lovestruck as a creative and fun way to meet new people and potentially find a date. There’s a large active membership, the quality of the profiles is high and the site is intuitive and has a lot of features to try and use. It’s not the cheapest dating site around but it’s one of the best we’ve tested to date.
Lovestruck review: Pros and Cons
Up-and-coming site with growing popularity across the UK. Works hard to keep scammers out.
A bit of a mishmash – tries to fit everything in and is therefore lacking its own “face”.
And that’s the end of our Lovestruck review, we hope you found it informative and good luck if you decide to sign up.
About the Author
Aet Suvari has been reviewing and writing about the world of online dating since 2008 and the launch of Online Dating Help. A stickler for promoting ethical practices within the UK dating industry she champions the sites that get it right while highlighting those holding it back. You can follow her on Google+
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