Online Buying Behavior: The Difference between Men and Women

Online Buying Behavior: The Difference between Men and Women

Are Men and Women equals when it comes to shopping?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is – definitely not. While much has changed in recent years, there are still some behavioral aspects that set these two genders apart. What this article is primarily tackles though is the difference between online buying behavior between men and women.

Despite growing gender equality in the workplace, stereotypes are still very prevalent in the household. A lot of families still see the male as the provider, while women (although they may also work) are still tasked with shopping for the family. As such, it really is no surprise that women dominate online retail.

The Stats: Where Women Win

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Women spend approximately 20% more time browsing through shopping sites online than men. While some key categories like sports, electronics, and outdoor goods are still predominantly controlled by men, women lead almost every other retail category.

What’s more, women don’t just spend more time shopping online. They also spend significantly more money in most categories for online purchases.

As an eCommerce retailer, it’s important to not only know who your audience will most likely be, but also the factors that will affect their purchase decisions. If you’re targeting women for example, you should know that women take coupons much more seriously than men. In fact, 68% of women shoppers (vs. 60% of male shoppers) are likely to use coupons when they want to save money while shopping online. They are also more likely to shop when there are sales (49% vs. 36%), and sign up for incentive programs (33% vs. 23%).

The Stats: How Men Measure Up

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However, one of the advantages men hold over women when it comes to online shopping is their dominance of the m-commerce market. Although there are several factors that affect this, such as the fact that men are more likely to own a smartphone than women, the point is that eCommerce merchants who focus their efforts on the mobile market should definitely cater their services to better deal with the needs of the male audience.

The two genders also approach online shopping differently. Males tend to stick to whatever mission they assign themselves when they shop online, whereas women tend to wander among different product categories. Before deciding on a purchase, men tend to search for information on the particular product’s page, while women tend to just scan the information before moving on to the next potential product. This often leads to more impulse purchases from women than from men.

Additionally, women also depend on social media more than men when making a purchase decision. Women are also much more likely to recommend a product to friends and family on a social networking site (35% vs. 28%).

Lastly, despite the apparent differences in shopping behavior though, Shoppercentric, a UK based research firm, claims that the younger shoppers, whether male or female, display mostly identical shopping patterns.

So what do all these facts and figures mean for an eCommerce merchant?

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First off, if you are providing a product or service primarily for men, it’s better if it’s within the male-dominated categories. When presenting your product, make sure to give accurate and detailed descriptions of your product. Show why you are superior to your competition and provide customer reviews and testimonials proving it.

On the other hand, if you’re product or service is for the female demographic, it might be better to make your site more interactive. Give the users a chance to communicate with one another via chat, forums, or reviews. Pay particular attention to ease of navigation, filtering, and sorting. You might even want to pay more attention to creating promotions and sales in order to give female purchasers more incentive to choose your product over your competitors.

If you are catering to younger shoppers, you might want to give them detailed product information, customer reviews, and opportunities for social interaction.

If you liked this article, check out these related posts:

+ AR & AI: The eCommerce Arms Race
+ How to Create Viral Marketing for eCommerce
+ How All B2C Companies Should Be Marketing By 2020
+ Email Marketing Tips for Retailers

July Partner of the Month – Celebros Conversion Technologies

July Partner of the Month – Celebros Conversion Technologies

Each month we feature a partner company that has produced great results for our clients.  This month we’ll be discussing a leader in search and conversion technologies, Celebros.

Redstage clients have seen dramatic improvement in conversion rates, especially in conversions from search, with Celebros technologies.  We’re talking an increase on search users from 2.3% to over 20%.  Yes, that kind of increase.

Who is Celebros?

celebro_logo1Celebros, Inc. is the global leader in eCommerce site-search, merchandizing and conversion technologies for online retailers.

Founded in 2000, Celebros revolutionized eCommerce by creating intelligent, concept-based search for online stores. Since that time, Celebros has emerged as the industry leader in conversion technologies, developing a cutting edge search solution that employs the most advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology available.

Celebros customers include over 450 eCommerce retailers and merchants with over 1,200 websites in eleven countries. A number of these are among Internet Retailer’s Top 100/500 companies and represent a broad range of industry segments, revenue and catalog sizes.

The new Celebros ConversionPro V8 suite of Conversion Technologies is the ultimate solution for optimal site-search, navigation, dynamic merchandizing campaign building and management, LiveSight analytics including user action based reports, cross-sell and product finder tools, and many other action rich features specifically designed to provide eCommerce professionals the best tools for their daily conversion management.  Shattering the eCommerce industry’s status quo, Celebros’ Conversion Pro V8 includes 13 conversion enhancing tools, products and features designed for eCommerce professionals with the sole goal of dramatically increasing conversions.

Partner of the Month Webinar

This month’s webinar, currently scheduled for July 24th, will introduce you to some of the most effective technologies that Celebros has to offer.  They’re also going to throw in some advice on how to deal with the new Google Shopping changes.  See below for an overview, and look for a followup post with a full description.

Start Converting – Empower your customers with ConversionPro V8

Discussion topics

  • Empower your customers to search your site using their own unique language and terms
  • Is your site ready for Google shopping switch to paid service?
  • Add true merhcandizing, navigation and semantic site search to your Magento store

Date: Tuesday, July 24th

Time: 2:00PM Eastern Time

The Webinar is rescheduled due to a scheduling conflict.  We will be creating a new post with further details.  Sorry for the inconvenience!