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Apr 29, 2009 | 3 minute read
written by Linda Bustos
Andy King, author of Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets posted Usability Study: Men Need Speed yesterday -- citing a study by Southern Illinois University on how men and women use the web. The researchers found that both men's and women's top priority is ease of use, with web speed men's second choice, and easy navigation women's.
Does this mean that in general, men are "hunters" and women are "browsers" online? If so, this is not unlike the offline world. In 'Men Buy, Women Shop': The Sexes Have Different Priorities When Walking Down the Aisles (from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), men ranked "difficulty in finding parking close to the store's entrance" as their number one shopping problem (29%). Women's top beef was "lack of help when needed," and one woman stated her favorite store's sales associates "are always great. They always show me different styles. They will show me something new that's come in." A man of similar age responded "I haven't had much interaction with most sales people. I don't really need them -- as long as they're at the checkout."
The differences don't stop there:
So what?
Should you build a male site and female site with different colors, copy, imagery, products, navigation and page load speed? Of course not. It's important to optimize for fast loading pages and logical, usable navigation for everyone. But you should look at your site and ask if your design and content decisions were made with bias. Personal finance site Mint.com's redesign boosted performance by 20%, and Future Now's Jeff Sexton suspects it's because the new design is more female-friendly.
When promoting Kindle, Amazon targeted a men and women differently (recognizing logged-in site members) by showing male or female hands in the promotional banner.
If you use customer surveys like ForeSee Results, you can gather your own site-specific research. Ask for survey participant's gender - but make it optional. Identify which are men's biggest complaints about your site, and women's. Make sure to ask ease-of-use, site speed and navigation oriented questions like "Please rate how well the features on [website] help you find the product(s) you are looking for" and "Please rate how quickly pages load on [website]."
Consider segmenting your email lists by gender (provided you asked in your sign up process) and testing coupon vs. sale headlines, imagery and even timing (start sending holiday emails earlier to females, or send fewer holiday emails to men).