Dell not in touch with feminine side, pulls ‘Della’ portal

It looks like that Dell has pulled the ‘Della’ mini-site that was targeted to women, after being live for less than two weeks. The mini-site launched on May 11 to help market Dells Inspiron range to women. However, the site was widely criticised for patronising women.

The site was full of pastel colours and images of female models using tech in various situations whether it’s on the couch, for business or out and about. A Tech Tips section talked about what you could do with a netbook including downloading recipes as well as telling women that they can “add storage to your netbook with memory cards or memory keys.”

Well if you head over to the original link (http://content.dell.com/us/en/home/della.aspx) it now redirects to (http://content.dell.com/us/en/home/lifestyle.aspx). There does seem to be some remnants of the old site, but there is no Della branding that I could see. The Tech Tips remain, but they’ve trimmed it down from 7 tips to 5 tips and cut out the ones related to finding recipes online!

Dell may have had the best intentions in trying to make its products appeal to women, but went about it in completely the wrong way by patronising women. It’s unknown whether the site is gone for good or whether Dell is going back to the drawing board. If they do come back with ‘Della’ they’ll have plenty of feedback in terms of direction.

Update: It appears we were being too hasty when we couldn’t find the ‘Della’ site. It is still very much alive, but is down currently due to a technical glitch. See the comments section for further details.