Comments on: What Women Want: Designing Websites for Women

By: Designing for Different Genders « Gift Finder Project

Designing for Different Genders « Gift Finder Project — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:31:11 +0000

[...] Websites used for this research: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/18685.imc http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4740173.stm http://www.ehow.com/how_5838142_design-websites-women.html http://blog.auinteractive.com/what-women-want-designing-websites-for-women [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:23:01 +0000

I recently worked with a female client – who had 1 male superior involved as well – and the project became a bit of a nightmare, with her thinking it should be one way and my firm pitching a design that the male client liked. She was never really able to articulate exactly what it was about the design but it didn’t ‘feel’ right for her. This was a resource site, so our approach was to make it very clinical, simple and focused on finding things fast. We took into account the fact that men and women, both individually and as a gender, simply find things differently – so we had various ways to approach the content. We did have ‘hard’ edges and corners, etc. but lots of clean white space, strong corp colors (based on their existing pantones) so I’m not sure what really would have ‘floated her boat’ in terms of the overall aesthetic.

By: Tim Bednar

Tim Bednar — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:32:12 +0000

I am a male web designer. I am working with a nonprofit client that works with women. The reaction to my first set of comps was to “soften” it up.

The first place I’m looking to is changing color (their brand colors are #873020 red and #567081 blue). My first round was mostly tints of the blue going to grey (gradients). This next round I’m just switching to red (too bad this red does not tint very well in my opinion). I’m unable to start introducing new warmer colors into the brand. So all I got is adding white, black, greys and tints of the red/blues.

I’ve already used gradients (which I think are softer) and rounded corners. What other basic design elements are “warmer”…

This is the 2nd or 3rd time this has occurred — so I’m really curious about how to create designs that are appealing to women.

By: Donna Fox

Donna Fox — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:20:25 +0000

You may not think you agree, Mahesha.. but the point is, it doesn’t matter what your conscious mind thinks… your DNA means you have preferences.. you can’t help it!

In fact, women make 85% of the buying decisions, and this includes things like electronics and sporting goods that are usually considered “male” items.

I have a report on 6 guidelines to make sure your websites are women savvy here
http://www.wonderwomenoftheweb.com
(no opt in required.. but if you do, you get some great teleseminar replays)

and if you’d like to go deeper, I’d love to see you at the event.
Donna

By: Mahesha

Mahesha — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 12:28:05 +0000

I do not agree with you. I do not care about the website designer’s gender. I only care what the website contents and if they are useful I will re visit the website.
My advise is just keep your web contents simple as possible for people to download quickly, otherwise woman or man who ever will run away from it. Good luck.

By: Tom Rose

Tom Rose — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:53:18 +0000

Interesting that you say that “Web 2.0 design” appeals to women, because my experience has been the exact opposite. My wife constantly critcizes websites with big and goofy fonts, metallic (Apple-inspired) buttons and gradiants. She doesn’t understand why all websites (especially those designed by web standards advocates, like myself) have to look so masculine (and boring). I don’t know, maybe she’s an exception. I’m interested to see what you come up with on the jewelry site.

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:40:32 +0000

I found this via Google search: I'm pretty sure Wal-mart is NOT what women want.