Launch of Nikah.io

 
Nikah.io is a safe Muslim Matrimony website for the good people of India.
 
Nikah.io was first launched in November of 2018 as a side project, and as members grew, it became one of the primary things I was handling. I continued to actively maintain it till Mid 2020, but as Covid occurred, a lot changed and I had to take a pause from actively maintaining the project.
 
Back in 2018, nikah.io was a full-blown matrimony portal with profile registration, login, profile viewing, chatting between the users, and so on. Let us call it Phase 1. It was like every other matrimony website in India with almost the same features. Apart from that, the website was slow.
 
I restarted it again in Mid May, around 10-12th May, 2024. The website that you are reading this post on was published on 31st July 2024. I have restarted it with a lot of learnings from the past, a few I can mention now and a few I will update in the near future.
 

• A handful of people got a lot of attention. I witnessed this in phase 1. Popular profiles had a lot of visits and messages from people immaterial if they were even a match or not.

Now I restrict users from sending matches if differences are obvious. Yesterday, I stopped a man from contacting a woman who was in a different class. These restrictions are hard to automate, and that is why now human input is visible.

 

• I had more than 2000 members. A lot of people used to message many others. If there was a delay in responding to messages by a user, the initiator of the message would suppose that they were not interested.

I take care of the initial communication as I make the two get on a conference call.

 

• Many users married through it and many users met through it with me having no information about it. The only way for me to find out if the site helped them was when users explicitly informed me about the marriage. Otherwise, it was almost impossible to find out.

With the current version, I can keep track of conference calls arranged and contacts exchanged and so on.

 
Similarly, a lot of things have improived or you can say sanitized in the current version.
 

What I want to do?

I want to create a safe environment for my users to find matrimony partners. Safe environment as in, I want my users to be confident with the prospect they are initiating interaction with. The first step is to not exchange contact and arrange conference calls. Lying in writing is passive and with the advancement of AI, it can be deceitful and go free.
 

But when you are interacting in real-time on a phone call and things don’t tally, you will become aware if the person is telling the truth or not. I also encourage users to initiate conference calls by letting the elders do the talking. On Thursday, I made two fathers talk. Ma Sha Allah, the boy, 28 and divorced, showed interest in a 20-year-old single mom with a girl child. Both their fathers spoke on a conference call, and today I exchanged the contacts after both parties explicitly told me to do so.
 
 

Why am I doing it?

Foremost, I find it fulfilling. I got married in 2007, ma Sha Allah. After only two months, I learned about relationship is not easy. With Nikah.io, I am trying to incorporate my learnings into matchmaking. Allah willing, I plan to make a portal for couples who can share their grievances in a non-offensive way to their partner. This will be one of my dream projects.
 
I started writing this 3 weeks ago (according to git) but see how time flies. Now, this post is not just about the launch of nikah.io but also how the website performed since its launch on 31/07/2024. I am going to share screenshots for you to see how it performed. Since I do not have a commenting system, you can share your feedback directly with me.
 
 

Analytics

Here are the screenshot from 2 analytics application I am using- henceforth I will be using only one.
 

Image not found:

 

 

 
 
Analytics 2
 

 

 

 

 
 
Analytics 1 was activated on 03/08/2024 and Analytics 2 was activated on 07/08/2024. It is still safe to say that Nikah.io was accessed by more than 1000 visitors accessing more than 10,000 pages, Alhamdulillah. The average number of pages accessed by a user is 10. Most visitors came from India and almost all users accessed the website from mobile, 80% using Android devices, iOS 7%, and so on. In the next few updates, I am going to remove desktop functionality. It will still be accessible from Desktop but show in mobile width only.
 
 
There are a few features that are requested by users but I haven’t implemented them because - firstly, I lack the technical know-how or it could be that implementing those features might have a negative impact on the website. The requested features are being noted down and will be implemented shortly.
 
I am thankful to the small community of users who help me from time to time by giving me constructive feedback. See my WhatsApp status as that is where most action takes place and I regularly update the progress.
 
If you want to help, the best way would be to become a paid member. The second best is referring people who want to marry, spreading the word, and lastly making dua for me.
 
Jazak Allah for reading. Happy matchmaking!
 
Your matchmaker,
 
Samir.