A recent survey asked women (and a few men) about their preferences when considering what they would expect on a website focused on the needs of middle-aged women in an online world. Respondents were queried on their feature preferences, terminology that applied to women of middle age, and some tag-line considerations for a fictitious website that would focus on women nearly or at middle age. Of the 98 who began the survey, 83.7% completed all, or most, of the survey questions. The breakdown of respondents can be found in Table 1 below. While all of the results were intriguing a few of them were especially insightful.

First, while most all the women agreed on responses to feature preferences, one response set was not as expected. For this question, respondents were asked to choose a number of features they would prefer, and expect, on a woman-focused website. The feature Connect with other family members was a feature expected to receive high marks. In fact, more women indicated this would not be an expected, or preferred, feature on a website focused on women (see Table 2 below). Further analysis indicates this was an age differential; while 55% of women 26-39 voted in favor of this feature, only 29% of women 40 – 65 agreed they would expect this to be a feature on a woman-focused website.

This response points to what appears to be a recent imperative of providing women 40 and older websites that are highly focused on their particular needs. Interestingly, of the four men responding to this particular question, three of them indicated that this feature would be expected on a women-focused website.

For feature considerations the decided winner overall was Expert advice on various topics for women, with 80.5% indicating this would be an expected feature on a site dedicated to middle-aged women online. The next highest ranking features were Customizable profile page (76.8%) and Upload photos (73.2%). The least expected features were Send free ecards (26.8%) and Connect with other family members (43.9%).

Another interesting distinction in the survey was found in response to the tag-line considerations. As with the features inquiry, the results of this question were most always agreed upon by women of all age groups, except for one. The tag-line World and life savvy women was narrowly dismissed by women 40 – 65 (53% disliked the tag-line) but females 26 – 39 considered it more to their liking, with 55% approving of the concept. These results are too narrow to make any definitive statements, but they again indicate difference between the two age sets among women.

Respondents were also asked to consider several words in the context of “middle-aged woman using the Internet”. They were asked to mark all words that they felt described this concept. Significant from this exercise were the four male respondents. Of the fifteen words offered (see Table 3 below), men disagreed with their female counterparts on four of them. The nature of the disagreements, more than the number, is what is significant here, however.

First, the question was posed as: Consider the following concept: Middle-aged women are the fastest growing demographic using the Internet and communicating online with family and friends, for both home and work life. Based on the concept above, which of the words below best describes these woman? Respondents were then provided with a list of the fifteen concepts from Table 3 above, and asked to mark as many as apply.

First, for the word Vibrant while 54% of all respondents indicated that this word would describe Internet-prone middle-aged women, three of the four men who responded felt this word did not apply to that concept. And while the word Fun had mixed results (50% of all respondents disagreed and 50% agreed) three of the four male respondents and 100% of the eight women less than age 25 disagreed that the word Fun applied to the Internet-using middle-aged woman.

Probably the most surprising results, however, were for the words Loving and Attractive. While the majority of respondents disagreed that Loving applied to the middle-aged woman online (57%), three of the four male respondents indicated that Loving did fit the concept. And finally, while an overwhelming 71% of respondents felt that word Attractive did not apply to the concept of an online middle-aged woman, once again, three out of the four male respondents felt that Attractive did in fact apply to the concept of a middle-aged woman on the Internet.

Of the fifteen words provided, the ones most strongly chosen as respondent’s pick for “online middle-aged women” were 1) resourceful (86.9%), 2) intelligent (84.5%), and 3) knowledgeable (82.1%). All remaining words were chosen less than 80% of the time by all respondents with the least favorite being carefree (4.8%) and authority (28.6%).
And finally, two of the survey questions asked for qualitative response, including #3 which asked Please consider the following phrase and respond with ONE or TWO WORDS that first comes to your mind: middle-aged woman. Some of the responses were extremely insightful. Here is a sampling:

The results of these responses were surprising in that so many were negatively tied. Considering all but four respondents were women, the negativity assumed by the words “middle-aged woman” is overwhelming. Responses to the second qualitative survey question concurred with the idea that “middle-aged woman” was just not a flattering way to associate women who, according to these respondents anyway, should be in the prime of their lives.

One respondent indicated that “experienced” was a turn-off word while several others noted that knowledge and purpose were more appropriate ways of viewing women in this age bracket. And finally one respondent indicated that “In a technological world, age doesn’t matter”, one of the more positive responses received for either of these qualitative questions.

Overall the survey results were particularly insightful. While I was not able to achieve a statistically significant number of responses for more in-depth analysis, the responses I did get appear to speak for themselves. Perhaps if nothing else, there is a moral to these results – women are far too hard on themselves, but when it comes to what really matters, perhaps men are far less shallow than they get credit for. And if these results are an indication at all (and certainly four men out of 82 respondents is not even close to a statistically viable analysis), men just might appreciate middle-aged women more than women appreciate themselves at this age.