What Love is Blind Can Teach Marketers About Effective CRO

There are two types of people in this world— those who love the tv show Love is Blind and those who have never seen Love is Blind.

For those who fall into the latter category, here’s the gist of the show:

The series follows 15 men and 15 women who date one another in “pods” where they can talk to each other but not see each other. When the connection feels strong enough contestants can propose marriage to one another, sight unseen. Only after a couple becomes engaged can they meet each other in person. From there the show follows the engaged couples to their wedding days (one month later) where each couple must decide if love is truly blind or if it’s time to break up. It’s probably no surprise that the results of this “social experiment” are messy.

Now, you’re probably asking yourself a few questions…first, why would anyone go on this show? Secondly, what did my mom change the Netflix password to, because I need to watch ASAP? And finally, why on earth is a website optimization company talking about a reality show?!

While we can’t answer the first two questions, as far as the last one goes—maybe it’s just the CRO Geeks inside of us, but we actually found a lot of parallels between the show and website optimization.

That’s right—CRO inspiration hit us during a binge of Love is Blind season 5. Keep reading to learn what Love is Blind taught us about CRO. 

Personalizing Your Website for Anonymous Visitors

Building a great website experience for an anonymous visitor is eerily similar to building a connection with someone you’ve never seen before. Just like the contestants of Love is Blind attempt to form lifelong bonds with people they know very little about, you need to think critically about how to build brand loyalty from your very first interaction with an anonymous visitor.

To do just that you’ll need to implement a CRO tool that enables you to use contextual data to create a great customer experience for anonymous visitors. Perhaps you know the time of day they’re visiting your site or their location—use this information to dynamically serve each visitor a version of your site that’s optimized for them. Just like forming a romantic connection through a wall, once you’ve built trust with an anonymous visitor by providing a great first impression they will share more information about themselves. For instance, a visitor might click on a recommended product or even fill out a form. AI-driven optimization enables you to use these bits of data to bring even more color to your 1:1 personalization strategy for each visitor.

Think of the first time an anonymous visitor views your site like a first date in the pods— use contextual data to start your relationship and behavioral data to keep the flame alive.

External Factors Impact Human Behavior

One of the hallmarks of a deteriorating Love is Blind relationship is when a couple begins to talk about how their relationship feels different since exiting the pods and meeting one another in person. Do you mean to tell us that dating in a vacuum where you can’t see each other feels different than dating in the real world!? Shocking!

‍

‍
All jokes aside, this tough lesson that Love is Blind contestants seem to learn every season is important to the practice of CRO. That is, external factors impact human behavior. When Love is Blind contestants return to their normal lives, the context through which they experience their new-found love changes and can impact the success of their connection. Similarly, exposure to world news, pop culture, daily life, or even competitor updates can completely change the lens through which a visitor views your brand. You’ll need to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry to understand which kinds of changes you need to make to your site to sustain and even improve conversion rates during uncertain times. 

Leaning into machine learning to understand which messaging will resonate with your site visitors will allow you to create the best possible experience for each visitor during fluctuating circumstances. As for keeping a romantic relationship strong after a poor entry into the real world, or a“meeting of the parents” gone awry...we have no advice.

When You Assume…

We all know the old adage about making assumptions…in short, you shouldn't do it.

We won’t name names, but in Love is Blind many a relationship has failed because contestants assumed their betrothed would look one way only to find out that they were not in fact “their type.” Because of this, other contestants choose not to assume what they believe the person on the other side of the wall looks like so they won’t be disappointed when they meet in person—a solid strategy.

We recommend doing the same when it comes to building website experiments. Rather than building landing pages that rely on assumptions about your visitors you should use AI and ML to dynamically show each visitor what’s right for them. While we all have good intentions, sometimes our assumptions are wrong. Because of this, CROs should rely on technology that can adapt in real-time based on real visitor behavior. Leave the assumptions to the Love is Blind contestants, and use AI to power your CRO strategy instead.

Thanks for coming on this strange journey through reality tv, dating, and of course CRO with us. We hope you enjoyed reading this extended metaphor about Love is Blind as much as we enjoyed watching the show.

Happy optimizing!

‍