How Men & Women Shop Online
It’s no surprise that Men & Women shop differently online & that they respond to different information & triggers. What is key is knowing who your customer base is; ratio of men to women & age range etc… When you have this information you can tweak/refine your site to appeal to your ‘Vanilla’ customer & so improve their shopping experience with you resulting in better conversion rates, higher average order values, repeat purchases & verbal recommendations to friends & colleagues.
Practical E-Commerce posted an interesting article on this based on information gathered from the U.S. however it is still relevant to UK online shoppers. Here is a link to the full article & a summary of some of the key points below:
Different Approaches to Online Shopping
Men tend to stick to their mission when shopping online, while women expand the undertaking by wandering among products and categories, according to a survey by Empathica, a customer experience consultancy.
Other Empathica findings include:
- Males and females differ in how they utilize a product page. Males intensely research the page, viewing all the product details and pictures, while women quickly scan the product page and go to the next product they want.
- Males tend to search by product while females search by brand.
- Fifty-four percent of men browse the Web every few days for shopping research purposes compared to 47 percent of women.
Opportunities for Ecommerce Merchants:
By catering to the distinctive patterns of males and females, ecommerce merchants can increase conversion rates.
- If you are serving a mostly male audience, present detailed product descriptions, feature comparisons to other similar products, and provide customer reviews.
- If you are targeting females, offer an online chat feature, discussion forums, high-quality visuals, customer reviews, and, if you are selling apparel, provide video clips and slide shows. Also include a list of recently viewed products and make it easy to return to those products. Since females do more browsing, ensure that your website allows for easy switching between related categories. The objective is to make the shopping experience as social as possible.
- Promotions and sales attract women so ensure that you are keeping up with your competitors with your marketing offers.
- If your products appeal to younger shoppers of both genders, make sure that you provide social media tools so they can share their experiences with friends. While older males don’t like to dither, younger ones enjoy browsing and interacting with others while shopping.
This article really highlights the differences between the two sexes & that if you know your customer base you can make significant improvement to your e-commerce site which can have substantial commercial benefits.
