Given that they measure "success" by response rate I'm not sure I put a whole lot of faith in the below quoted analyses. Perhaps the low "success" rate is because people reply w/ an outside service that OkCupid can't track?
"#4 – Don’t try to take it outside.
Obviously, all successful OkCupid relationships outgrow our in-site messaging feature. But an offer to chat or of an email address right off the bat is a sure turn off. One of the things online dating has going for it is its relative anonymity, and if you start chipping away at that too early, you’ll scare the other person off."
Having used the site, no one puts contact information in their profiles. And a request to use the built-in chat system right away is a pretty sure sign that I'm not going to want to talk to someone.
I'd bet that, to a point, there's a correlation between the volume of text sent and reply rate. However, that might just have to do with the fact that a longer message is more likely to reference specific things in the person's profile that they find interesting (for example, I replied to almost anyone who showed interest in the fact that I bake bread and like kites).
given that okcupid doesn't charge for their services, it seems unlikely that a majority users are switching to out-of-site communications right away. There are no real incentives to do so.
Switching to out-of-site has two big benefits:
1. OkCupid's chat system is horrible, and results in lots of missed messages.
2. An IM handle gives an easy way to ping people later, the other person is subscribing to be IM'd by you in the future.
"#4 – Don’t try to take it outside. Obviously, all successful OkCupid relationships outgrow our in-site messaging feature. But an offer to chat or of an email address right off the bat is a sure turn off. One of the things online dating has going for it is its relative anonymity, and if you start chipping away at that too early, you’ll scare the other person off."