• by Masha Geller , February 4, 2003

I think I may have found one answer to the question every man will be asking in about 10 days: What do women want? Turns out it’s online communities. While I personally wouldn’t advise making use of this information for Valentine’s Day, I do think marketers should pay attention.

According to the latest stats from comScore, women's sites attracted 34.8 million visitors in December (combined male and female). With more than twice as many visitors as its nearest competitor, iVillage was the category leader with 15.8 million unique visitors (womensforum.com, AOL Women, MSN Love & Relationships and BHG.com rounded out the top five).

comScore data also show that women's sites are broadly appealing to females of virtually all age groups. In fact, the Women's category reached approximately 30% of total female Internet users age 25 to 64. Females under age 18 were noticeably less prone to visit the category, likely due to the limited attraction of family and home-related content, which is common throughout the category.

Also, comScore says that women living in smaller household are far more likely to visit women’s sites. In fact, although women living alone make up the smallest segment of Community-Women site users, they are 56% more likely to visit women's sites than the overall population would suggest. In fact, the Women's category reaches an astonishing 38% of women living alone.

What’s somewhat interesting is that programming for women also attracts men. As with offline media, it is not uncommon for online media targeted specifically at women to also attract a sizeable male audience. Although men accounted for fully 42% of visitors to the Women's category in December, they were less intensive users, accounting for only 35% of the total time spent on these sites. The average female visitor spent approximately 20 minutes at sites in the Women's category in December, while men spent 15 minutes.

Bottom line? Women wield enormous power in the U.S. economy, making and influencing purchase decisions across every sector from automotive, to consumer packaged goods, to financial services and virtually everything in between. And since 51% of the nearly 145 million Internet users in the U.S. are women, it's no surprise that they represent a sizable and vital audience for marketers.