Desperately Seeking Customers: Chinese Dating Site Jiayuan Turns to E-Commerce

In the battle to turn users into paying customers, the Chinese dating site Jiayuan (NASDAQ:DATE) has come up with a new tactic. It has partnered up with China’s biggest e-commerce site, Tmall, to set up on online store, from which Jiayuan sells its paid memberships and virtual items.

The Jiayuan shop is online here (pictured above). Its “diamond” 12-month membership is selling on its new Tmall store for 498 RMB ($79), giving buyers access to a bunch of premium features. Any items bought in the Jiayuan Tmall store will be redeemable immediately on the dating site.

Clearly, Jiayuan is trying to get close to potential (paying) users where they tend to shop. The site’s CEO, Rose Gong, said in a statement today:

China’s singles are increasingly relying on online retail as one of their preferred shopping channels. So this new store on China’s most popular B2C online retail platform not only provides another convenient purchasing option for current and potential Jiayuan users, but also builds the Jiayuan brand among users of the Tmall platform.

China’s most popular dating site has had a rough ride since it listed publicly last year. Last time we talked about Jiayuan was back in March of this year, when the company missed analyst’s earnings estimates by a country mile, causing its stock to plummet. It was at $5.90 per share back then, but it ended at $4.76 when NASDAQ closed for the day on Wednesday.

Jiayuan had 55.9 million active users at the end of December 2011, though only 1.17 million of them were paid members at the time. We’ve reached out to Jiayuan for any updated stats.

The conventional dating site is facing stiff competition from new (and largely free) social apps that are taking away its monied, smartphone-toting potential customers, such as the flirty, location-based app Momo.