Women-Only Web Sites Don't Offer Mag Alternative

"These sites are trying to replace magazines by coming up with exactly the same content and women are more discerning than that - they want something new and different," he told delegates at the World Association of Newspapers conference on female readership.
He said sites aimed at women - who make up 40 percent of Europe's online community and up to 50 percent of users in wired-up Sweden - should be more informative and offer more opportunities to buy.
He said new media owners could improve by observing U.S. sites such as women.com and branded consumer products sites, as a good example of targeting modern women, many of whom guard the family purse strings. Procter & Gamble Co. recently launched reflect.com, a health and beauty site which sells its brands online.
In Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Spain, 60 percent of women are providing at least half of the household income, Mawditt said, confirming the death of the "housewife" role in most major European markets.
Coupled with more work, women have less time to consume media. Twenty five percent of European women never read newspapers and 16 percent never read women's magazines, according to TGI Europa 1999 figures.
But although more women are coming online, the time European surfers spend online is flat at around 45 minutes per visit, with time falling in some countries.
"The evidence suggests that the more mature markets are spending less time online as people become familiar with using the Internet," Mawditt said, although UK time is rising because of a rise in the number of Web sites and their increased marketing spend.
Mawditt said that magazines were coping better with the threat of the digital revolution and newpapers still had to adapt - the threat of better quality advertising space and accurate measurement of site visitors could cost newspapers advertising revenues, including money from classified advertising, the backbone of many local publications.