Designing for Different Genders

I have been thinking about the design for the gift finder website and have been finding it difficult to come up with a design that would be suitable for both genders so I have decided to research gender differences in design.

Many websites have a male gender bias because women have the ability to think like a man far more easily and more often than a man can think like a women

Women's Preferences in Design:
-They prefer pages with more colour in the background and typeface
-They prefer more rounded shapes and rounded edges
-When looking at images on websites they prefer more informal images than posed images
-Women generally prefer sites that have been designed by women
-They prefer soft, neutral tones and gradients
-Women don't like cluttered sites that use a lot of links, loud music or flashy videos

Men's Preferences in Design:
-They prefer pages with dark colours
-They prefer straighter lines and fewer colours
-When looking at images they prefered the three-dimensional look and images of self-propelling rather than stationary objects.
-Men generally prefer sites that have been designed by men
-They prefer the language used on websites to be more formal or expert language than informal

Some organisations try to design websites for both men and women equally but research shows that more websites are biased towards men.

Businesses can be losing money because they are not meeting the visual needs of their target audience.

Websites used for this research:
www.imediaconnection.com/content/18685.imc
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4740173.stm
http://www.ehow.com/how_5838142_design-websites-women.html
http://blog.auinteractive.com/what-women-want-designing-websites-for-women