E-business Briefing: September 2005

Gloria Moss combines a background in HR with a unique understanding of the impact of nationality and gender on graphic, product and web design. She currently holds the position of Senior Research Fellow in the Business School at Glamorgan University, and Visiting Professor at ESG Paris. 

Previously, Gloria has held senior positions at Courtaulds Acetate and Eurotunnel. Her clients have included M&S, BT, Bounty and Corporate Edge.

1. You’ve recently conducted some research into the importance of gender in web design, which seems to have been pretty much ignored as a subject. What prompted you to conduct such a study?

Several things. For many years, I have been researching men and women’s design aesthetics, examining what I call their production and their preference aesthetics. All of this started about ten years ago when I made the surprise discovery that all the paintings I preferred in an exhibition of paintings by men and women, were in fact produced by women. 

I wanted to get to the bottom of whether this was a chance event, related perhaps to my quirky tastes, or whether this was a more general phenomenon that would apply to other men and women. It did not take long to discover that no one else had published anything on this topic, so the only way to get an answer was to do the research yourself.

I used some pretty rigorous statistical techniques and published the results in papers from 1995 to 2002. These showed that there was strong statistical evidence of differences between the production and preference aesthetics of men and women. My focus up to that point had been graphic and product design, and what the results showed was that - in terms of production aesthetic - there were significant differences in the way men and women used colour, shape, detailing and thematic material. 

In terms of preferences, there was a very significant tendency, statistically speaking, for each sex to prefer designs produced by people of their own sex. I called this phenomenon the ‘self-selecting phenomenon’. 

It made sense to extend the study into the field of web design for two reasons. Firstly, men and women are moving to a position of parity in terms of web usage, and increasing proportions of women are now engaging in e-commerce.  It became essential to understand whether the preferences of men and women in terms of web design were similar or different. As you rightly say, nobody had done this research before.

2. What methodology did you use? What did you seek to find out?  

The selection of an appropriate methodology has been key in all of this work, and I was very fortunate in the web design work to have Dr Rod Gunn, mathematician and statistician, as co-researcher. We did four things. 

Firstly, we established whether the production aesthetics of men and women in the UK differed and if they did in which ways. Secondly, we looked to see whether these differences across national boundaries, examining websites in France and Poland as well. Thirdly, we measured the aesthetics used in different industry websites, from beauty websites, with a predominantly female target market, to University websites with a market consisting equally of men and women. Last but by no means least, we measured the preference aesthetics of men and women.

It is vital in work of this kind that the statistics are beyond reproach. To guarantee this, we used decent sized samples of students with 30 male and 30 randomly selected female students whose personal websites we rated against 23 criteria. These spanned the three areas of navigation, visual elements and linguistic elements. We repeated this in each of the countries we were interested in, and then used the using the chi-square test of association (with p < 0.05 considered as the threshold for significance) to compare the ratings given to the male and female-originated sites.

The results? In the UK, 13 out of the 23 features showed up as significantly different between the male and female websites, and twelve emerged as significant when the results of all three countries were pooled. We were fortunate in doing this work with a Polish marketing expert, Krzysztof Kubacki, who analysed the Polish websites. The results showed that the gender differences crossed national borders.

A subsequent step was to measure the extent to which certain industry sector websites used the masculine or female web aesthetic and this was done by rating a random sample of websites against the twelve or so features that emerged as significant, and ascribing them a ‘gender coefficient’. In all cases, the overwhelming majority of websites emerged as being rooted within a masculine design paradigm.

Finally, in order to compare male and female preferences, a mixture of male and female students (67 in all) were asked to rate a number of male and female-produced websites. It was an exciting moment when the results of this test emerged. What they demonstrated was an extremely strong tendency towards own-sex preference, with men rating the male-produced sites much more highly than the females, and vica versa for the females. In statistical terms, in fact, the effect could not have been stronger.

3. In the offline world we know that men and women shop in different ways, whether zigzagging supermarket aisles or responding to colourful product displays, so it follows that perceptions of web design also differ. What do the genders look for in a good website?

Quite different things really. Men look for linearity, formality and a not too colourful look while women look for more colour, more informality and less linearity. The language they use is also different, and the sites women create also have more links than the men’s. 

From the evidence of the men and women’s sites across three countries, it is quite clear that men and women part company on many different features! Take a look at our blog and you will see examples of male and female-designed websites.

4. Your study suggests that male web designers predominantly design for men. Can you elaborate? Do women design for women? Any ideas on the ratio of male to female web designers? Can men learn to design for women, and vice versa?

People have a tendency to design what they find appealing so in that sense, men will tend to design in the male aesthetic and that will tend to appeal most to men. I have carried out several surveys of the web design industry in the UK, and have consistently found that men constitute about 74-78% of designers.

Can they be taught to design for women? That is a difficult question since it presupposes some understanding of the reasons for the differences. If you assume that the differences are rooted in society and the way that boys and girls are socialised, then you could expect that the differences could in fact be taught. 

If, however, you assume the differences to have some sort of biological origin (which I believe has an influence together with socialisation), then it might be more difficult.

5. Are web designers being taught to consider gender? If not, then I guess this is a big part of the problem?  

All this work on gender and aesthetics is pretty new, so only the most enterprising colleges will be teaching it. It is important that these findings are passed on to next generation of designers. At the moment, I imagine that the notion of parallel design paradigms is not a hot topic although nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be proved wrong!

6. The research seems to prove that there is no one-stop shop approach to web design. So presumably you are suggesting that web design needs to begin with a close look at a prospective target audience, as much as anything?  

Absolutely. Our preference tests show clearly that what appeals to one group may be wide of the mark for the other. So, information on the gender constituency of the target market is therefore essential to successful web design. 

Let me give you an example. Women are the main market for Beauty websites and yet the majority of these sites are designed using a male-production aesthetic. Lots of straight line, boxes, serious images and few colours. From a design point of view, they are not having the impact on their target market that they could have.

7. How important are the visual aspects of a website in driving e-commerce? Is ‘look and feel’ as vital as, say, intuitive navigation?

The literature emphasises the centrality of non-price mechanisms of differentiation and the fact that the perceived visual attractiveness and content of the website can influence perceptions as to the site’s usefulness, enjoyment, ease-of-use and satisfaction. Relevant factors are likely to relate to technical issues (eg speed of loading), content or form. 

Where the visual element is concerned, graphics is listed as one of ten factors causing dissatisfaction with users in the US and Netherland, leading Human Computer Interaction (HCI) specialists to attempt to understand the elements (visual and content) in web design that are valued and those that currently produce a deficit between expectations and experience.

There are analogies with traditional retailing where the form and content of store atmospherics has become an established field of research study. There is wide acceptance of the importance of the retail environment and physical form of a product in creating certain effects in buyers. Where products are concerned, research shows that products perceived as pleasurable are preferred and used more often than those not perceived as pleasurable, leading to enhanced purchasing.  

8. You analysed 300 UK retailers and found that they are very masculine-focused, yet we know that e-commerce is fairly evenly split between men and women. How big is the potential upside, if gender-orientated e-tailers redesigned their sites for men/women?

The upside is potentially massive. At the moment, the vast majority of websites are employing a single type of aesthetic (the male production aesthetic) and completely ignoring the existence of another type of aesthetic (the female production aesthetic). The same applies in many areas of graphic and product design as well. It is a bit like restricting yourself to a diet of carrots and potatoes. If you didn’t know that apricots and carrots existed, that would be one thing. But once you knew of their existence, you’d be crazy to ignore them wouldn’t you?

9. Do you have any shining examples of good / bad practice? Have many retailers actually implemented gender-orientated design?  

This is early days, and the vast majority of sites are designed within the paradigm of the male production aesthetic: lots of straight lines, squares and rectangles, serious language and few colours. There are only a few exceptions at the moment using vibrant colours, varied shapes, detail, and a more lighthearted approach. The Accessorize website used to be a good example of this, but I noticed it’s been changed recently.

10. For a site like Amazon, which encourages users to log in and promotes personalisation, should it consider tweaking the look and feel on the fly, in accordance with gender?   

User statistics show that just over half the people buying books online in the US are women. Action to introduce a non-masculine element is therefore pretty essential in order to maximise the effectiveness of the site.

11. Despite all the talk of cultural differences across Europe, your studies seem to prove that men and women act in a similar fashion whether in Poland, France or the UK.

Absolutely. We’ve a paper coming out in the International Journal of Applied Marketing that shows this. I had the good fortune of working with a Polish Marketing expert, Krzysztof Kubacki, and he sources and analysed the Polish websites. 

12.  I’ve previously compared persuasive design to one of those kid’s books with multiple choice endings. What are your thoughts on persuasion, and how can design influence the customer journey to achieve business goals?  

That’s a nice analogy. I agree with you that one needs to be humble and put oneself in the shoes of the user. All the research I have done over a ten year period persuades me that the designs people produce are mirror images or X-rays of themselves, and people will respond most positively in the presence of designs that offer them images of themselves.

Let me explain. There is a whole body of work in the field of Art Therapy and psychology that analyses mood and personality from the colours and shapes that people draw. From this you can perhaps see that people’s graphic productions are X-ray images of themselves. There is even work showing that 9 times out of ten, when asked to draw a person, most people will draw someone of their own gender. What we draw is, in many ways, a version of ourselves.  

When it comes to selecting a design we like, there is a lot of research that tells us that we select something to express ourselves. In design terms, that means that the product must express a language of colours, shapes and themes that is the visual equivalent of the personalities of the target market.

This is perhaps a new idea to many designers and marketers – that there is a language of graphic expression that can be learned and applied. I have come to perceive this largely because I trained and practised for many years as a Human Resources professional and was fascinated by projective tests. I learned then that art therapists could encode someone’s character from the shapes and colours used in their doodles and paintings. From there to commercial products is just a short step, but one that can radically impact on profitability. I explain all of this in the in-house seminars I run, details of which can be found on our weblog. .

13. How come you haven’t been stifled by the Politically-Correct Thought Police? 

It is true that there are certain groups who are hostile to arguments about sex differences. You can’t really argue with the facts though can you? And in terms of motivation, it must be said that the notion of difference only stands to empower men and women since it places a premium on having a male and female perspective at senior levels. Only the most antediluvian of companies will rely on a single way of seeing now that there is evidence of a multiplicity of ways of seeing.

Gloria was interviewed by Chris Lake, editor. Interesting, right? Post your comments on the forum.

1. Dixons hails birth of 'Son of Freeserve' (The Register)
2. Advertisers log-on to internet campaigns (The Times)
3. O2 gambles on internet at your fingertips (The Guardian)
4. Nano owners complain about damage (BBC News)
5. Motorola CEO Ed Zander in “Screw the nano” shocker (Yahoo News)
6. Jakob Nielsen asks: Does search relevancy matter? (useit)
7. Google in mine-is-bigger-than-yours 7^th birthday shenanigans (Google Blog)
8. Friends Reunited attracts £100m bids from publishers (This Is Money)
9. Kate Moss secures $5m 'lifeline' from online gaming site (Online Casino News)
10. Spot the rich techies! Forbes publishes '400 Richest Americans' list (Forbes)

For less than ten pounds a month individual users can access *all* of our exclusive internet marketing reports. They will help you define a best practice digital strategy to help you make more money online.

All-in-One users benefit from unlimited press release distribution onto Google News and an Enhanced Listing in our agencies directory (logo, link and optimised for internal and external search).

Comprehensive corporate subscription packages are on offer for in-house teams, vendors and agencies (access to content and events, such as our roundtables). Corporate Subscribers include Google, Yahoo, BT, Argos, Shell, esure, Siemens, Volvo, ShopDirect Group etc.

Recent internet marketing reports by E-consultancy:

1. Affiliate Marketing Networks - A Buyer's Guide (2005)
2. Managed Hosting Service Level Agreements
3. Managed Hosting - A Buyer's Guide 2005
4. Internet Statistics Compendium - August 2005
5. Online Advertising Networks - A Buyer's Guide [July 2005]
6. Managing An E-commerce Team [June 2005]
7. Web Analytics - A Buyer's Guide [June 2005]
8. Search Engine Marketing - A Buyer's Guide [May 2005]
9. Email Marketing Services Solutions Buyer's Guide [April 2005]
10. Online Customer Services Solutions Buyer's Guide [March 2005]
11. Usability & Accessibility Buyer's Guide [March 2005]
12. HTML Email Design Tips [February 2005]
13. Online Marketing Masterclasses - Powerpoint Presentations [February 2005]
14. Online Surveys and Research - Roundtable Output
15. Online Retail User Experience Benchmarks 2004

>> View the full list

>> Upgrade now for access to all the above

Questions? Call +44 (0)207 6814052

For any enquiries or comments e-mail info@e-consultancy.com or call +44 (0)207 6814052

Free Beers On Fridays?

E-consultancy lives at Lemon Studios in London EC1. Digital professionals can hire desks to become part of this offline digital network - £425 per month with no long-term commitment.
Download a pdf of the Lemon Studios floor plan.

Any E-consultancy All-in-One subscribers will get a £250 discount, because we're nice like that... contact bookings@lemonstudioslondon.com to enquire about desk space. And yes, there's free beer on Fridays.

Snail mail: E-consultancy, Lemon Studios, 2nd Floor, 85 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5AR

You can sign up for this newsletter and/or keyword alerts by registering (free and quick) on the E-consultancy web site: www.e-consultancy.com/account/register.asp.

To stop receiving the newsletter please update your preferences online.

If you have lost your log-in details please contact info@e-consultancy.com with 'Password AWOL' in the subject line.

***NOTE TO READERS - E-consultancy never sends attachments in automated emails, apart from the initial invoice when you subscribe or renew a subscription. Do not open emails that have attachments unless you are absolutely sure they are from a trusted (non-spoofed) source.