Maximising the effectiveness of Web Design: The secrets about men and women's web preferences

1
Maximising the effectiveness of Web Design  The
secrets about men and women's web preferences

• G Moss
• Wales Marketing Innovation Forum
• 19 September 2007

2
Good news!

• Lots of pictures,
• so no danger that,
• following lunch

3
Web design important gap

• E-commerce is in a high growth state
• usage - 934 million in 2004 1.35 billion in 2007
• 2002 2004 50 increase in Fs shopping
  online 17m -gt 28m shoppers (Forrester, 2004)

4
Satisfying the customer

• Business survival depends on shaping
• products and services around the
• unique and particular needs of the
• customer (Hammer, Reengineering the
• Corporation, 1995)

5
Satisfying the customer Gender

• Many markets segmented -gt male and female
  markets
• Female grocery, furniture, books, small
  electrical,
• OTC medicines, domestic property, cars
• Male SLR cameras, computers, petrol

6
Satisfying the customer Gender

• 64k question
• Do men and women like the same kinds of design?

7
Web design (Moss Gunn)

• Compared M and F-produced web sites.
• Rated sites across 2 main measures (23
  variables)
• Visual
• Language
• 30M and 30F in UK
• 90M and 90F websites
• UK, France and Poland

8
Results UK / France / Poland

9
A comparison of the male and female tendency to
use straight lines UK
10
A comparison of the male and female tendency to
use large numbers of typeface colours UK
11
A comparison of the male and female use of
informal / formal language or a combination of
both UK
12
Male website example 1
13
Male website example 2
14
Female website example 1
15
Female website example 2
16
Web preferences

• 67 respondents (38M 26F)
• Men prefer male-produced websites
• Women prefer female-produced websites

17
Causes of differences

• Evolution of visual skills in response to
  division of
• labour from 1.7m 10,000 BC (from lower
  palaeolithic to
• end of Pleistocene epoch).

18
Causes of differences

• Gatherer
• Inferior 3D rotation and targeting accuracy
• Low incidence of colour blindness
• More sensitive to the long-wave spectrum of light
  that detects red
• Superior object-location memory

• Hunter
• Superior 3D rotation
• and targeting accuracy
• Colour blindness
• Prefer blue to pink
• Inferior object location memory

19
Implications

• Books
• Groceries
• Higher Education
• Beauty

20
Books

• Sector with second largest number of e-commerce
  shoppers in US (Nielsen Media Research Study,
  1999)
• M / F near parity
• US (Nielsen 1999) 55 of online consumers
  F UK 56 of paperbacks bought by F (Mintel)

21
Amazon
22
Merlin
23
Groceries

• Online parity between men and women shoppers
  (Research and markets, 2002)
• Tesco market leader in UK with 27 of the
  market, 10 above its nearest rival (TNS, Feb
  2004)
• www.tesco.co.uk

24
Tesco
25
Asda
26
Toys
27
Universities

• Competitive market
• M/ F near parity (Fs 53 of ft u/gs and 66
  of p/t )
• Analysis of 32 HEI websites 30 with overall
  masculine orientation

28
(No Transcript)
29
(No Transcript)
30
University web designers
31
Beauty

• Beauty
• Predominantly female market
• Men are half as likely as women to have health
  and beauty treatment

32
Beauty
33
Beauty
34
Beauty
35
IT professionals
36
Conclusions (1)

• Differences in M / F production aesthetics
• Differences in M / F preference aesthetics

37
Conclusions (2)

• Massive implications for e-marketing to M and F
• Implications for recruitment of IT professionals

38
Final conclusions

• Need to spread the word, even if it shatters
  cherished conceptions about optimal design....

39
Action points

• What have your learned?
• What could you do differently?
• Follow-up?

40
Research and consultancy

• Bounty
• Directski
• Ford
• Marks and Spencer

41
Bounty
42
Can we help you?

• University of Glamorgan,
• gmoss_at_glam.ac.uk rwgunn_at_glam.ac.uk
• 01443 48 3293