Web Design For Women?

[CSmhacky]

Adding a feminine template would probably do fine...

[FontMarketplace]

Rach,

I knew there was a reason I was trying to mainly market to women, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Exactly what I was looking for, thanks so much. I agree that most men don't care too much about the design, so aiming it at women would make sense, especially a shopping related site.

Thanks to everybody else for their input. I hope to have the initial design soon and will post it.

[jb1ker]

I once read an article about the importance of the font-family. Whereas men prefer solid fonts like arial, tahoma and verdana, women would prefer more subtle fonts: lucida sans, georgia, helvetica,...

Regarding to background men prefer clear color differentiation. Women choose subtle pastel matching colors.

Get the picture? Solid, clear vs subtle matching...

[azmartha]

I'll second (or third) the votes against pink. Nothing turns me off faster than That Color. And I'd also be wary of blanket statements like "Women are interested in this," or, "Women respond best to that." I mean, come on, we're a pretty diverse bunch. Some of us have a real thing for shoes. And some of us like to fix cars.

[redwall_hp]

Perhaps you shouldn't focus so much on designing around the target user demographic, but around the subject of the site? Use colors that evoke excitement, thoughts of saving money, etc. Follow normal usability guidelines, make the site look good, etc. If you don't focus so much on designing for women/men, and focus on what looks good to you, visually describes what the site is about, and most importantly, is easy to use, you can't go wrong.

[htpc]

Lilac is supposedly the safest colour to allure women.

[bekkilyn]

This response might be too late for the OP, but maybe it would be of help to others designing similar sites.

Keep things simple. When I'm visiting a site such as a coupon site, I'm there for the coupons. If I have to hunt around everywhere for the coupons, I don't care how pretty the site is, I'm leaving. I've lost interest in it.

Make sure the coupons are organized in a way that makes them easy to find. If I'm looking for a coupon for peanut butter, I want to be able to get to it pronto and not wade through a bunch of baby formula and oil change coupons to get there.

So far as the appearance of the site goes, make the text easy to read and the colors easy on the eyes. Whether those colors are pastels or solids, I don't care, I just don't want to be welcomed by a black background with lots of red text, or big blocks of bright yellow with mauve headers, or anything else that presents a risk of blinding a visitor.

Basically, if you have the content that people want and it's not physically painful to use your site, they will come regardless of their gender.

I just don't really see coupons as very gender specific to have to try to attract one gender or the other.

[cyjetsu]

I think you have a big error in your marketing strategy. You are targeting the food/coupon industry, which is not women based. Even if by statistics you got get 65% women visiting your website which I really doubt, alienating men is just stupid.

Your product is not female orientated. If your product was dolls, lipstick, pink things or tampons, then sure you can design your website specifically for women.

Design your website for the product and about the product. The theme should be food and value, saving money, getting food for free etc.

Marketing is more than just the first random idea that comes to your head. Think about what actually works and what won't. Men generally eat more food than women anyway.

[FontMarketplace]

I appreciate the feedback but I think you might have missed it when I revised my question in the beginning to ask if there is anything that women tend to like or dislike just because I think it would be good to know, not that I am going to totally cater to them and alienate men.

We are pretty close to being done now, we are just finishing the datafeed and it should be done. The site is pretty neutral except for a small piggy bank icon and I plan on posting it soon. We actually re-thought our strategy and decided to just promote all kinds of coupons in general. I know there is a lot more competition and this is a side project for us, so we are not expecting to make millions, but hopefully something we can build upon in the future and maybe break off into separate smaller niche sites one day. Thanks again to everyone for the feedback!

[Tekime]

The key is finding the right emotional hot buttons that they will respond to (in both images and text) so knowing exactly who your audience is and what their problems are will get you a long way into designing something they just can't live without...

Hands down, this is the best advice presented in this thread.

[Kithomes]

One suggestion from me. Color pink is the mantra for the design color

Pinkk.!!!!!!!!1
Those are the dayz gone when girls were into the pink. Now the girls want the information, information which is useful to them..

[cyjetsu]

Girls will always be into pink. Sure they want information and good content too, but colors and themes have deep effects on our subconcious which affects our perceptions. I think females are *generally* biologically more receptive to pink than males. Don't underestimate the power of colour.