Here's the gist of the email: "Why were all of the sites you and the third-party company analyzed "Gender Orientation-Male" or neutral? Women shop on the web, shop at Orbitz, Travelocity, Schwab, so you can't mean these sites were created predominantly for men, can you? What does that say about your marketing research, or theirs? What would a "Gender Orientation-Female" site be? Victoria's Secret? Also, try a forum-based web site if you are looking for youth-online culture; I would guess the genx sites you looked at are for middle-agers trying to think-feel-look young."
First and as always, thanks for emailing me and sharing your thoughts. Second, my response...
The pages and websites being male oriented was (I think) more luck of the draw than anything else. When NextStage got started, we had sites more female oriented than male oriented. This was years ago and was due (again, I think) to the newness of the business. My understanding is that even in the big design houses final approval is by males so that might account for some of it.
Do women shop on the web? My goodness, yes. And by offering that a site has a "male orientation" I don't mean the site was created predominantly for men. Please understand, there's a difference (to me and NextStage) between a site being male "oriented" and being "created" for men. A male or female orientation has more to do with the design process (color selection, text, images, fonts, any rich media used, ...) than whether or not the site or page is created gender specific.
Believe it or not, I don't spend a lot of time on the web except for research purposes. If you (or readers of this blog) can offer some suggestions for genx and millennial sites, I'd appreciate it.
My thanks to you and please let me know your thoughts. I may not respond to my emails quickly but I do respond and I truly value reader comments.
Thanks - Joseph
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