It's official. Yahoo biz posted a press release this Thursday saying women "Stay Wired as they Age."
Reporting on a study done by Frank About Women the press release notes that today's women are not settling for rocking chairs and knitting needles the way our mothers and grandmothers did. In fact, included in the demographic of 'women over 40' are some of those mothers and grandmothers!
This is not news to me. The information cites big ticket items women are comfortable buying: cell phones digital cameras, even computers. The women of Frank About Women say, "Women are rewriting the rules about what it means to age." This follows reports from several months ago stating that women are rewriting the social landscape of the U.S., and they are doing it digitally. Jane is an avid Internet user, no matter what her age, and she is keeping up with technology alongside the men in her life.
There is more to this than meets the eye, of course. When we talk about women over 40, I imagine each of us has a certain mindset about who those women are, including what they look like and how they shop. I caution folks not to put these women into an old-fashioned, 20th century stereotypical pose. It's hard not to do that because some of the women we're talking about came from the Dick and Jane era. They wore dresses at home while cooking and cleaning, they served their children cookies and milk after school, and they watched soap operas every afternoon. So the story goes. I don't remember my mother living like that, but..."Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" prevailed and there are still tendrils of that mindset swirling around the cosmos these days.
What Frank About Women notes in their press release are the same things I mention in my book; that women have "increased discretionary income" with age, that we are not set in our ways, we are flexible and open to change, and we are not afraid to buy big ticket items on our own.
Mind you, sometimes nature doesn't keep up with technology. Once you accept that women over 40 are a major part of your target market, that Jane is, indeed, using the Internet more and more, you also have to address the issue of how she is doing that. With many of the Janes being over 50, and some well into their 60s, it behooves the smart ecommerce site to use these guidelines, from MSN in their The Know ecommerce section:
* Use fonts that are easily read; larger is better.
* Be careful with color contrasts; remember--how the page looks on YOUR monitor, is not necessarily the same as how it will look on Jane's monitor.
* Keep buttons and tabs far enough apart that the user won't mistakenly click on the wrong one. Confusion will ensue and Jane will click out of your site.
* Mark your graphics with alt-tags--those pop-up boxes that explain what the grahpic is. You don't really believe that all pictures are worth a thousand words, do you? Women like great pictures accompanied by plain text that adequately describes products.
Remember not to overuse italics. Italics are often hard to read online. Keep the Macromedia flash and animation to a minimum, if you choose to use it all. You aren't making movies, you're selling products and services. If you must have a flash opening page, give Jane the option to "skip" the movie. Eighty-per cent of the time, she will. (and so will most men...depending on what you're trying to accomplish with that flash animation.)
For a wind-up, here's some "breaking" news from a Media Post report on a study conducted by Oxygen Media, Grey Global Group's MediaCom, and NOP World's RoperASW: Women Like Humor!
In fact, younger women, the study says, like sarcasm.
And, women 18-49 like a mate who is funny--rather than a mate who is rich.
Plus, when watching TV, 88% of women are less likely to change the channel during a commercial break if the commercial is funny.
And the holy grail of marketing to women: Nine out of ten women will tell other people about a funny commercial they like.
So, the idea is to keep your site updated to make shopping easy for women. Tell a joke. Don't compartmentalize women by age or group. Learn their differences, but understand that underneath it all, women are sisters at heart. We are very free with criticism of places or people who don't meet expectations, but we also happily share information on things that impress us.
So, what's not to like about that?
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