There is plenty of evidence that men tend to have a more accurate sense of spatial awareness than women; true there are many women that have finely-honed spatial skills, but on average men are better able to imagine things in three dimensions than women. Women, on the other hand, have a better empathy than men, often being able to detect the mood of others around them whilst men are oblivious. In fact, throughout the scientific literature you will find thousands of research papers all purporting to tell us that men and women are different. Mars and Venus and all that.
Some psychologists, though, don’t believe these differences are “natural”; instead they explain the variations we see between the genders as things which are socially constructed – girls and boys are brought up differently and therefore end up behaving differently. Whether you believe that nature or nurture is responsible for gender differences is not really worth worrying about if you run a website – after all you can’t do anything about it…! What is worth concerning yourself with, however, is that the differences do indeed exist.
Now, there is another gender difference which has been discovered – and it has a neurological basis. It appears that men and women do indeed perceive the world around them slightly differently. According to researchers from City University, New York, the presence or absence of testosterone in the foetus leads to different connections in the visual centre or the brain. The result is that men and women end up literally seeing things differently.
Men tend to discriminate close rapid movement of a visual scene whereas women tend to be able to spot subtle colour changes more easily. This could have important implications for web design. If you are aiming at a male audience you should not use subtle colour signals to differentiate aspects of a page – whereas for a female audience this would work well.
Of course, if you are trying to reach both genders you may wish to avoid colour and flashing imagery as they are more gender specific. Oh goodness – what do you see littered throughout the web? You got it, flashing coloured images and advertising….!
Related articles
- The Internet – Men And Women Have Different Preferences (medicalnewstoday.com)
- Men Are from Reddit, Women Are from Pinterest (thecontentlab.icrossing.com)
4 thoughts on “Men and women see your website differently”
Graham
You maybe aware of “Gender Design & Marketing” by Dr Gloria Moss. Her publication is all about the difference between the sexes.
We stumbled over here by a different website and
thought I should check things out. I like what I see
so now i’m following you. Look forward to looking over your web page repeatedly.
the neuroscience of gender differences forms the basis of one of my keynotes and your spot on with this information, thanks for flagging it Graham. As you say, the nature nurture debate remains controversial (and I believe always will), but there are some hard facts. Unless we are aiming our business at one gender or the other, I suppose we should play safe and try to appeal to both. Have you thought of creating a workshop on how to appeal to both genders via websites? I think it would be very popular. BTW if anyone is reading, this please don’t think the female market likes ‘pink’ .. can be a big mistake!
Thanks for your comment Lynda and for the idea for a workshop on gender and websites. I shall have a think about that – sounds a great idea.
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