Gendered Websites??
Okay, so whenever I am in a bit of a personal pickle and feeling unsure about my direction I get inspired to look at other folks’ websites for inspiration and design ideas. Well, after perusing a fair number of websites of folks who are doing what I want to be doing I noticed an alarming trend - the websites appeared to be…gendered.
What I mean by this is, whenever I went to a woman leader’s website I was met with brightness, bright colors, and a polite introduction: Hi, I’m… however, whenever I went to the male leader’s websites I was met with SO much confidence that some of them didn’t even say anything about themselves and the just focused on what the website was about.
I thought this was interesting - women tended to started off from a relationship first space and the men seemed to focus on efficiency and just giving people the goods. No hi, no welcome - just a “Here’s what you came for". Now, I can’t speak to the approaches that these industry leaders have taken nor can I speak to outcome that these methods produced - I just found it to be an interesting trend to pick up on. In fact, I honestly can’t think of a website I’ve gone to where the man says “Hi, I’m….and here’s how I’m going to help you.” It seems the assumption is that you already know why you are there…or else you wouldn’t be there?
I surveyed 10 websites, 5 from male identifying and 5 from female identifying folks who kind of offer similar things at a similar level: self help, personal development, coaching, business development, etc. Perhaps if they were product based businesses vs. service based businesses we’d see something different - who knows!
Seeing these websites lumped together I’m also noticing color choices - men tend to favor the blue/gray combo whereas women have more options for color in their branding: consider the clothes that are offered for boys vs. girls when they are young (and even as adults) Do we see a resemblance?
Knowing what I know of building a business and marketing, I can see that each grouping is targeting specific people: Women to women and men to men (though they will all have outliers I am sure) and so is the approach working because of that OR is that the only approaches we’ve only ever seen so they APPEAR to be more trusty worthy and delightful for our respective genders? This is an example of how gender really limits people. While women can play up the blue theme (I’ve been using it for years!) if these men opted to use a neon pink or yellow ombre on their site I am CERTAIN it would create a lack of trust among the men they are hoping to attract because we’ve been taught that color and flair are “a woman’s game!” I remember when I was being mentored, my mentor suggested I choose a more feminine color - like purple - to create trust with women (like everything, I took that one with a grain of salt and did not choose to change!).
So, which approach works better? The straight to it approach that the men’s websites seem to offer or the more drawn out relationship approach with bold and beautiful graphics that women seem to offer? Do they both work the same, just differently? I have no idea - so tell me your thoughts! What type of website design are you attracted to? Do you like the straight to the point or the wordy polite introduction? (ps. I have a wordy polite introduction). I just found it fascinating and wanted to share AND wanted to get your feedback - what do you think is going on here?
