Site a forum for female ad focus

By Dita De Boni

The unique way women relate to the internet makes them "perfect targets" to respond to niche marketing on specially designed web sites.

So says market researcher and founder of soon-to-be-launched web site nzwomen.com, Sarah Kay, who aims to provide both a forum for the budding female business community and a channel for specialist ad/marketing that targets the web-savvy female consumer.

Trawling past busty blonde babes and brawlers, Ms Kay found sites concerning females did not provide New Zealand women with a regional point of reference.

"There were something like 200 million sites with content aimed at women, but little on New Zealand. I felt isolated and didn't know many people on-line."

She decided 10 years in design, marketing and web work gave her the grounding to launch a site specifically for New Zealand women - nzwomen.com - which is based on the United States model, women.com.

In the US, women.com has around 100,000 pages of programming including shopping channels, branded magazine sites, and personalised services for members.

In 1999, the US site reported revenues of $US30 million (up from $11.6 million in 1998), 151 million page views per month and a domestic audience of around 4.2 million viewers.

New Zealand's nzwomen.com will have 20 sub-topic categories and up to 400 topic categories, its own search engine and hopes to generate "considerable" advertising revenue, says Ms Kay. The site will be launched tomorrow night at the Women in Business conference in Rotorua.

While Ms Kay acknowledges a New Zealand-focused site may not become the multi-million dollar corporation that is now its US sister site, statistics for internet use in this country show the first bloom of a substantial e-commerce growth in which women play an important role.

A survey from the middle of last year by ACNielsen shows more than one million Kiwis went online in the last 12 months, 69,000 used the internet to advertise and sell products and 184,000 used it to purchase products.

Fifty-one per cent accessed information about products and services and 46 per cent of everyone online were women.

Women are particularly attractive for e-hawkers, with several studies confirming a demarcation between women's activities online and men's. Carla Sinclair, in her book NetChick, summarises the findings: "[Women] perceive a computer as a tool, not a toy."

Ms Kay agrees, saying women go to the internet with a purpose and an end achievement in mind. Taking care of the household is often one of those aims.

"The internet is also a perfect tool to reach women with because it's a 24-hour medium, so women can access it after work is finished and the kids are asleep.

"For women, brand loyalty and referrals are an important point of reference when shopping, and that fits perfectly with the way the net operates, in that women hear from other women where to go on the web, what to look for, that kind of thing.

"It's also a question of how women browse. They spend little time on the internet other than researching, correspondence [by e-mail] and networking, so there is less aimless wandering. Just as many women work the household budget, we also tend to 'budget' our time on the web, as well as wanting to enjoy the experience."

The site will drive women to specialist, niche advertising that will elicit information from female browsers in ways Ms Kay describes as non-intimidating.

"On the internet, the one-on-one nature of browsing means you can access their information without them being influenced by anyone, and it's up to you to provide everything the user wants before they think about it."

She concedes that many households in New Zealand do not have internet access or even PCs, but says that is another reason advertisers would be eager to sign on to nzwomen.com.

"You're reaching the affluent, household shopper," she says.

More than surfer research - collected from visitor interaction information, a site log and links to related New Zealand web sites - the site will be a place for women to "jam" on business ideas, a place where they will glean value from bouncing ideas off other women.

"What I've found is that women are largely ignorant of technology and to compound that, few [New Zealanders] have really realised how the internet has drastically influenced the marketplace."

Business ideas can be sought and exchanged through e-connections, she says, and ad/marketing to participants will follow, taking into account the interests of the target groups.

"Traditional media will still be needed to drive people to web sites, but what people here have not yet grasped is that it is not all about hits, it's not about reaching most groups.

"It's about targeting one person really well, or looking at who your target group is and finding out what they do, where they are, what they like and being there."