Thank you very much to those of you who have taken the time to fill out the survey. I'm getting some good ideas for improving the site. I'll post some some of what I learned once more people have had the chance to take the survey. But there is one stat that is pretty shocking to me -- the ratio of men to women that read my site. I think only two or three women have ever left comments on my site, so I knew the percentage of female readers was low. If I had to guess I would have pegged my readership as 80% male, but I had no idea it was 97% male. I'm curious to see if the ratio stay that way as people continue to take the survey during the week. This also makes me wonder what's the percentage of female traders. You sure don't see many on the floor of the NYSE. I wonder why that is...
WOW! Being one of your female readers, I am shocked by these results. Maybe the numbers will improve as more people take your survey. I didn't expect a 50/50 split, but I would have thought it would be closer to 80/20 also. I wonder why...
The split is 91/9 right now with 150 responses to the survey.
Mike,
At first glance your audience stats are surprising, but it just may be more related to the age of your site, whom you have been sharing it with and the methods of distribution along with other 'relative' factors. Bear in mind too that the bulk of people are considered 'average' and the 'average' female is more interested in her homelife, family and the more 'shallow' subjects such as celebrity news, daytime talk shows with largely emotional content vs. the 'harder' content requiring the usage of logical, mathematical and even scientific thinking skills. Granted, the Internet attracts a greater percentage of 'above average' and educated individuals but there will always be greater percentages of 'average' people who are either too lazy or unable to consider more rigorous subjects that require a bit of independent thinking skills. If you are not specifically targeting female investors through online resources which target the female demographic that would be most interested in the subject matter then naturally it will appear lower. If I were you I would look to online business associations and find a way to distribute the site through those whether online or in person (ie: presentations at brokerages where you demonstrate how your site can educate potential customers of the brokers or how about a presentation at any local investment clubs?) You might want to start with http://www.nafe.com/ (The National Association of Female Executives) which has a large membership of professional women who are involved in financial services and who would likely have an interest in your site. The last time I had a membership directory for them it was in 2001 and it was about 2" thick with over 800 professionals and business owners listed.
I'll take a guess that these along with the age of your site (from the archives the first apparent post was titled 'Genesis' in April of 2003) are the main reasons for the lower percentage of females in your viewership based on personal experience with a business website prior business partners put together as a kind of basic 'hot sheet' for easy email distribution and access for our real estate brokers and investors to advise of various offerings. You can see that site in the URL above which lists our past closings. I'm debating as to what I am going to do with the site next, it may be changed to another use but it did serve its purpose to advise people by email and Internet of our activities.
The site was created in 2000 and only received 'hits' from those who were advised of the site by email, word of mouth or through any of the major real estate sites such as http://www.loopnet.com, http://www.ccim.com ,search engines or by browsing through geocities.com where the site resides to this day and which I think has only had a maximum of 10,000 hits in its lifetime with maybe a grand total of 5 female brokers and 0 independent female investors so our stats are much lower than yours appear to be for the moment. Of course, if you want to count the wives of our investors the stats go up-can it be largely relative?
Have you considered asking your male viewership if their wives/significant others also engage in trading alongside their husbands/significant others? If you do so, maybe then we will all be pleasantly surprised.