How big is the Online Matrimony market?
100 crores?

According to Murugavel Janankiraman, Founder & CEO, BharatMatrimony.com, “…matrimonial websites are continuing on the path of high trajectory growth garnering Rs. 58 crores in 2005-06 and expecting to cross Rs. 98 crores in 2006-07.”

‘Marriage portals still in knots despite wedding boom’, says Financial Express.

According to industry insiders, of the 100-odd matrimonial websites in the country, only some are making money. The rest are either just able to break even or are running in losses. But promoters of marriage portals feel the present scenario may be tense, but the future is perfect.

Well let us take a closer look at the online matrimonial business…

How does a prospective customer behave once he decides – it is the time to get married!

How does he choose the best matrimonial site? Or does he simply put up his profile on all available sites? Does he pay for the service on all sites?

What else is he looking out for in a matrimonial website?

Do these websites remove a listing after the person gets married? Do they even care about that? Is there a term of ‘Active marriage-able profiles’?

Are matrimonial websites safe? Are youngsters using it for dating?

So how does one compare such sites? Does one use Alexa?
But Alexa is all skewed up and can be manipulated! – Is that the thought running through your head?
But Alexa does even out things while comparing sites to an extent, doesn’t it?

Alexa ratings are just a small piece of the bigger picture…

We decided to carry out a little study and compared the four of the biggest matrimonial players in the country. We’ve put ourselves in the shoes of the prospective customer of a matrimonial site…

Note: No bias at any stage. We are not related to any one working in these companies. None of the websites mentioned are our clients either.

Let us start with Shaadi.com:

Reasons any other user will also start with Shaadi.com:

• The name is short and simple and most relevant.

• They are considered as Market Leaders, though some might disagree.

Who considers Shaadi as market leaders?
We took a small sample of 20 people (Between the ages of 23-32) – asked them the first site which comes to their mind when we mention Online Matrimony websites?
13 mentioned Shaadi.com.

The sample might be small, but these are the real people who are looking to get married soon. Once you position yourself in the minds of the prospective customer – that is enough reason to be considered as a leader to some extent.

First thing I notice on their site:

Search:

Pretty simple. Without registering on their site I was able to view 50 pages of profiles.

Dynamic testimonials:
i.e Asok Mehta in the above screen-shot changes to Nausheen Wadia on refreshing the page.

A simple registration link.

They want me to know that they are No. 1! I might not click on the link – but it does make an impression.

They got a number displaying the number of matches they’ve made (Not seen in above screenshot). Nice big number. The user obviously doesn’t know what number to expect or what would be a great number – a six digit number has a nice feel to it

An array of regional options.

Paid Membership:

In your first visit to Shaadi.com you might not be able to find the Paid Membership page. You’ll be able to find the link once you spend some more time on the site or register a free profile.

12 months (Platinum) for Rs. 4250
6 months (Diamond) for Rs. 2655
3 months (Gold) for Rs.1595
Bold Listing - for only Rs. 459

Is getting married a year long procedure?
Buying a 3 months premium pack would definitely make more sense.

Registration is pretty detailed but doesn’t go to the level of depths which some of the other sites do.
They take around 24 hours to upload a profile. This might not go well with the impatient users, but the reason they do it is to supposedly screen a profile and check if it carries enough information to be listed.

They also run Shaaditimes.com – A Wedding Portal of sorts.

Next we move to BharatMatrimony:

Recently Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) asked Bharat Matrimony to stop its success ads. Which means they have either been highly successful in match fixing or at least in advertising about their ‘success’!

I had the pleasure of interacting with Mr. Murugavel Janankiraman (Founder) during the DMC (Mumbai – March) – surprisingly we spoke more about their Real Estate and Job Portal. An interesting fact is that Mr. Murugavel supposedly found his better half at BharatMatrimony!

Did ask him about them going offline like Shaadi Point – to which I didn’t really get a satisfactory reply.

One of the elementary reasons why a prospect might visit Shaadi before BM is the name. The name is pretty long.

Longer the name = More the chances of a mistake while keying the site in + Online Laziness Factor (The laziness factor which creeps into the net surfer while keying in a really long URL. It is not the usual laziness, but more a mental sort of thing)

A reason why someone would visit BM before Shaadi is:
- Good advertising by BM
- Word of Mouth

Let’s get to their site:

What do I see?
An attractive girl! What are the chances that she’s going to be my soul mate?

Even SimplyMarry has an attractive girl on the first page, but at least they’ve mentioned age, height, profession etc – to make it a little believable that she has her profile uploaded.

The Search is again simple and efficient. Displays results without having to register – registration mandatory if I’d like to contact my prospective bride though (This is a common feature in all sites).

I see a banner of an offline meet – Mega Swayamvaram.
This drives the point through that users are more comfortable with offline activities – and I’m sure offline activities by all the matrimonial players will increase over the next year.

And then BM tries to convince me that they are #1. They talk about their Limca Book of Records entry and also being the most trusted and most visited matrimony portal!

Interesting thing is that they too quote Alexa statistics – and say they are way ahead of competition! But Alexa has a completely different story to say…

Shaadi, BM and SimplyMarry – all three of them quote JuxtConsult and JuxtConsult’s User Friendliness Report and how well each of them fared.
Shaadi and BM are clients of JuxtConsult too.

[Well the above report has received a fair share of criticism.

Quoting from the post -
“The 6 usability aspects are ‘branding', ‘navigation structure and added features', ‘website design' ‘company and contact info', ‘contact responsiveness' and ‘technical parameters'.”
‘The top item on their list of usability features is branding! Would anyone please tell me just how can branding be a part of website usability? Sure, branding can play a huge role in building website popularity and thus the user base, but surely not usability.]

How important is it to me as prospective customer of BM to know that they are number 1? Would I shift to Shaadi if I realized BM was #2?

The same 20 people whom we asked about the ‘first matrimonial website which came to their mind’ (By the way, 5 of them had said BharatMatrimony) – the same people said it didn’t matter much to them who was No. 1, because they knew that a site being #1 or #2 does not guarantee the perfect groom or bride.

What about parents who do the spouse hunting for their sons and daughters?
On asking few parents the same question, the unanimous reply was – what matters to us is the site with the largest number of profiles and the amount of replies we get.

Back to BM. They give a detailed section dedicated to interests and hobbies, making it a little more personalized and gives added information about the members, which in this case shall be quite valuable.

The registration process is highly detailed. It can be looked at from 2 sides, either as tedious or extensive. Since this is a marriage portal, more the information, better are the chances of getting a good match, hence, the extra information is welcome. It may take a little longer to register here, but should be worth it.

Also noticed their ISO 9001:2000 certification.

Paid Membership:

Far too many options…

Classic Super Package:
3 months – Rs 2290
6 months – Rs 3890
9 months – Rs 4990

Classic Plus Package:
3 months – Rs 1990
6 months – Rs 3390
9 months – Rs 4340

Classic Package:
3 months – Rs 1590
6 months – Rs 2690
9 months – Rs 3440

Far too many options for comfort. A user wants to get married and wants to see value. Classic Plus just doesn’t make sense and I would be surprised if it gets many sales.

Matrimony Xpress:
Their blogging platform. This acts as a gateway to share information on various topics ranging from marriage, anger management, family budgeting to love, and personal issues. This is not an open blog, one must be registered to be able to blog on the site. The posters don’t appear to be users though. It’s more like competition for Shaaditimes.com

Both Shaadi and BharatMatrimony are celebrating their 10th Anniversary…respectively! And they have our well wishes.

Next is JeevanSathi:

JeevanSathi comes from the stable of InfoEdge, i.e. it is a Naukri.com group company.
They are definitely not a distant 3rd in the Matrimonial race and in fact have really been pushing Shaadi and BharatMatrimony.

Surprisingly JeevanSathi doesn’t command a strong brand-recall factor. I’m not sure if this could be because of the name?

A little off-topic - I feel sathi should be spelt with a double-a and I’m glad they know this too, JeevanSaathi.com auto forwards you to JeevanSathi.com.

Let’s take a look at their site..

I was greeted with a pop-up. Which shows a snapshot of their TVC and asks me to register?
Why would they do such a thing?

They too have a search spread right across the page.

Because of the colour scheme used in the top half of the page – the Live Help really stands out. This is a feature provided by all the sites but you might miss it in the other sites, unless you are specifically looking out for it.

They are concentrating heavily on testimonials. In fact this is the first thing which catches the eye of the user. There were 6 Marriage success stories on the first page.
Do people actually read these?

We got interesting responses from people when we asked them how important are testimonials on a matrimonial site?
10 of the 20 said a simple NO. One of them actually took the pains of explaining the reason to us. ‘No, I don’t read the testimonials – but the visual presence of such testimonials have a psychologically comforting impact in the mind of the user and are therefore necessary’.

Other answers varied from ‘Yes I read them’ to ‘Might go through them when I’m rather bored’.

Paid Memberships:

eRishta Membership, eClassifieds Membership, eValue Pack Membership
18 options! That is insane!

18 options! They actually want the customer to say no to 17 options!

How is a user to know, what is best for him?

A better method would be an interactive medium…

Ask the user what he wants?
Do you want to write instant messages and initiate chat?
Do you want to let other members view your contact details etc etc
How many months are you looking at?
(Or have this in a checkbox list with all options)

And then display the closest eRishta or eValue offering or suggest him some other.

Next comes SimplyMarry.com:

Last December TimesMatri switched to its current avatar of SimplyMarry.com. They started off with a nice bang – full paged ads almost everyday in all of Times Groups publications.
Striking ads – with takes on Veerapan, a rockstar, a bhajan singer etc

Well it surely has gotten SimplyMarry more visitors than TimesMatri used to get.

Well Times of India is still the leading off-line matrimonial service – and if they start listing these on their website for free (I’m not sure if they already do this), they’ll definitely never be short of fresh profiles.
Simple tactic – show the benefit of a free listing on SimplyMarry.com when a person buys a listing for the matrimonial classified in the newspaper and later on try to convert him into a paid online customer.

Let us have a look at their site:

Take the top half of Shaadi.com and the bottom half of JeevanSathi.com and you have SimplyMarry.com

Not saying that this is a bad thing. ‘Study your competition and copy their best moves’ is an age old practice.

I love the whole simplicity factor though. The simple search has just 3 categories to start off with.

Silver Membership- 3 months Rs 500
Gold Membership- 6 months Rs 1000
Diamond Membership- 12 months Rs 2500
Platinum Membership- 12 months Rs 3500

I don’t quite understand the funda of limiting Diamond/Platinum to 12 months. I guess it’s a nice sales tactic – even though a customer might not need the product for such a long time.

Well enough of reviewing, let us start with some hardcore comparisons:

Let us start off with some Alexa statistics:

The Top 100 rankings of India lists:

JeevanSathi - 27
Shaadi - 30
BharatMatrimony - 96
SimplyMarry - 240

Well, apparently JeevanSathi is the site which gets the most traffic from India.

Let us now look at the global reach over the last 6 months:

Shaadi leads currently and has been quite consistent. JeevanSathi and BharatMatrimony are almost on par. BharatMatrimony did see a sudden surge in Mid January.

Now let us use the parameter of Pageviews:

Now here’s a surprise! JeevanSathi seems to be the site receiving the most Pageviews. I feel this is because of extensive Testimonial readership. BharatMatrimony does have a bit of Ajax, but they should still be commanding higher pageviews! Especially the sudden surge in reach wasn’t complimented at all with any rise in pageviews.

How popular are these sites internationally and amidst NRI’s?

Percentage Traffic From Various Countries
India	53.1	72.5	80.5	63.2
USA	11.5	4.6	3.1	4.5
UK	6.2	-	-	2.9
UAE	3.5	4.0	2.4	10.6
Traffic Rank in Various Countries
India	31	28	94	241
USA	1646	11,108	28734	51,292
UAE	276	693	1,287	1,260

Well Shaadi seems to be the clear winner and they prove it via Compete.com statistics too - where they simply annihilate the competition:

Here are some figures from Compete:

No of People Visiting the Sites
Criteria & Change	Shaadi.com	Jeevansathi.com	Bharatmatrimony.com	Simplymarry.com
People	695,190	34,824	31,339	21,782
Average Stay (Average no. of mins. On the Site per Visit)
Avg Stay	6:31	5:23	2:19	4:14

So what does Ranking.com have to say about these sites?

Shaadi.com – 477
JeevanSathi.com – 1317
BharatMatrimony – 2215
SimplyMarry - 11701

(The lesser the rank - the better of course)

Some other comparisons:

Google PageRank - A rank awarded by Google. A score out of 10. The higher the better.
Alexa Rank - The lesser the better
Compete Rank - The lesser the better
Quantcast Rank (Quantcast provides US base site visitor demographic statistics) - The lesser the better
Technorati Links - The more the number of links, the better for a site.

Pricing Comparison:

Duration	Shaadi.com	JeevanSathi.com	BharatMatrimony.com	SimplyMarry.com
3 months	1595	1350 – 1900	1590 – 2290	500
6 months	2655	1900- 2750	2690 – 3890	1000
9 months	-	-	3440 - 4990	-
12 months	4250	4100	-	2500 - 3500

Note: All figures mentioned are in Indian Rupees (INR)

Conclusion:

Shaadi.com seems to be the site I would put my profile on. They’ve got the largest NRI audience. The site has a nice secure feel about it, but of course there is scope for improvement. Would be nice to track the performance of off-line Shaadi Points.

BharatMatrimony.com is extremely popular amidst South Indians and for other regional services too. Rather too aggressive while Marketing themselves - which might not be that good a tactic. A lot to work on to be No. 1.

JeevanSathi.com has been doing really well and according to statistics they get the most traffic at least in India. After speaking to a couple of parents (who were spouse hunting for their children) - they said they were most comfortable on JeevanSathi. They need to reduce the no. of paid membership options asap!

SimplyMarry.com started off with a bang - only because it belonged to the TimesGroup. The name of the website has received a lot of criticism. But I did like their advertising campaign. They are in a great position to be eventual leaders if they can utilise the newspaper matrimonial classifieds.

A WATConsult effort

Related Posts

• Cost-Per-Lead: Is it really worth it? (Online Matrimony industry)
• Matrimony DTH Wars! - Exclusive: BharatMatrimony Tie’s Up With Tata Sky To Launch Actve Matrimony!
• Now Get Married Via DTH? - Shaadi.com Ties Up With Dish Tv
• Online Matrimony Market Statistics Reveal 12 Million Users!
• SimplyMarry Launches SimplyMarryzine.com - A competitor to ShaadiTimes & MatrimonyXress