Women beat men in web browsing

Women still using web differently to men

Women know what they want from the internet and spend less time than men getting it, according to analyst firm Jupiter MMXI.

Women spend an average of seven hours online compared with male surfers who clocked up 10 hours per month, its study found.

While there are still half as many European women online as men, the number of females getting wired has shot up by 29% in the past year.

Spain has one of the lowest numbers of women surfers - 29% compared with 42% in the UK. But they spend the most time online, favouring instant messaging sites and file-sharing.

The majority of wired women across Europe are young, except in Germany where the over-50s spend over nine hours online each month, with almost four hours of that time on AOL.

Shop till you drop

Sites that provide information to help women with their daily lives are popular

Michele Poliziani, report author

Generally men are more interested in browsing, reading content and downloading software.

Women use their time online more purposefully - shopping, organising travel, banking and sending e-greeting cards.

Report author Michele Poliziani believes sites need to tailor their content to appeal to women.

"Clearly sites that allow women to perform a function or provide information to help with their daily lives in some way are popular," he said.

For the average young British woman, the most popular site in February was a supermarket site, sainsburystoyou.co.uk, followed by egreetings.com and a health website, wellbeing.com.

Retailers Argos and Marks and Spencer were also in the top five.

Surprisingly, only one site aimed at women, ivillage, made it into the top 10.

Music and the man

For men, the music software site Winamp.com was the number one destination.

It was followed by computer retail site dabs.com and music site hmv.co.uk.

Portals such as lads' magazine fhm.co.uk were also popular, with Datingdirect.com also making it into the top 20.