Friday, October 28, 2005

Key Website Research Highlights Gender Bias

Univ. of Glamorgan: "A first-of-its-kind study conducted by experts at the University of Glamorgan has proved that men and women really are poles apart when it comes to what catches their eye on the internet.
The piece of research, into what aesthetically appeals to males and females when surfing the web, has found that websites which might appeal greatly to one sex are a total no-no with the other.
With the internet doubling its size every two to three months, it is now more important than ever for websites to catch the eye of their target market.
Gloria Moss, Research fellow at the University of Glamorgan Business School teamed up with statistician Rod Gunn and Krzysztof Kubacki to conduct the research to discover if businesses and organisations are making the most of their web presence to help them reach their particular target audiences.
'We started off by looking at the personal websites created by 60 university students, 30 male and 30 female, to discover whether there were any major design differences. We looked at factors such as language, visuals, and navigation - the differences were immediately apparent,' explained Gloria Moss. 'We compared the sites on 23 factors and differences emerged on just over half of these. This is a massive number'.
Where visuals are concerned, males favour the use of straight lines (as opposed to rounded forms), few colours in the typeface and background, and formal typography. As for language, they favour the use of formal or expert language with few abbreviations and are more likely to promote themselves and their abilities heavily.
A selection of the University websites was then shown to a group of individuals of both sexes who had to rate their appeal on a scale. In almost every case women preferred those sites designed by women and men showed a preference fo"

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