Andy King, author of Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets posted Usability Study: Men Need Speed yesterday — citing a study by Southern Illinois University on how men and women use the web. The researchers found that both men’s and women’s top priority is ease of use, with web speed men’s second choice, and easy navigation women’s.

Does this mean that in general, men are “hunters” and women are “browsers” online? If so, this is not unlike the offline world. In ‘Men Buy, Women Shop’: The Sexes Have Different Priorities When Walking Down the Aisles (from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), men ranked “difficulty in finding parking close to the store’s entrance” as their number one shopping problem (29%). Women’s top beef was “lack of help when needed,” and one woman stated her favorite store’s sales associates “are always great. They always show me different styles. They will show me something new that’s come in.” A man of similar age responded “I haven’t had much interaction with most sales people. I don’t really need them — as long as they’re at the checkout.”

The differences don’t stop there:

• Women Shop Like Santa, Men Shop Like Scrooge. Women start their holiday shopping earlier than men, usually shop for more gift recipients. Men are more likely to become angry and frustrated by holiday shopping. (I also recall a study a couple years back by BIG Research that claimed men are more likely to grab gifts for themselves, mostly electronics).

• Men prefer coupons, women prefer sales. Perhaps this is because a coupon can be applied to something a guy already knows he wants, the coupon is a predictable discount and an extra incentive to reward himself. A sale applies to a number of products, the “fun” for women is browsing the sale to find great deals – it’s recreation. The reward is finding treasure and feeling like you deserve it because you found such a great bargain.

• Guys think about what can benefit them now, while ladies think about what benefits them long term. Perhaps that’s why women browse sales, they keep there eyes open for things they can wear next year or stash away for a future Christmas gift.

• Men and women view images differently and respond differently to humor. This impacts conversion for advertising, website imagery and messaging. They also prefer different colors (but not all women love pink).

• Men and women may buy the same products, but for different reasons. As Future Now’s Holly Buchanan points out, you can use customer reviews to identify which product attributes and benefits men and women rant or rave about.

So what?

Should you build a male site and female site with different colors, copy, imagery, products, navigation and page load speed? Of course not. It’s important to optimize for fast loading pages and logical, usable navigation for everyone. But you should look at your site and ask if your design and content decisions were made with bias. Personal finance site Mint.com’s redesign boosted performance by 20%, and Future Now’s Jeff Sexton suspects it’s because the new design is more female-friendly.

When promoting Kindle, Amazon targeted a men and women differently (recognizing logged-in site members) by showing male or female hands in the promotional banner.

If you use customer surveys like ForeSee Results, you can gather your own site-specific research. Ask for survey participant’s gender – but make it optional. Identify which are men’s biggest complaints about your site, and women’s. Make sure to ask ease-of-use, site speed and navigation oriented questions like “Please rate how well the features on [website] help you find the product(s) you are looking for” and “Please rate how quickly pages load on [website].”

Consider segmenting your email lists by gender (provided you asked in your sign up process) and testing coupon vs. sale headlines, imagery and even timing (start sending holiday emails earlier to females, or send fewer holiday emails to men).

Despite economic uncertainty, ecommerce is expected to grow 11% in 2009, according to Forrester Research.

Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru said the majority of the 2009 growth in online spending will come at the expense of physical stores. She expects more consumer dollars to be spent online because it’s easier for people to comparison shop and to find what they’re looking for.

In addition to comparison shopping, the Internet offers shoppers more ways to save money than offline shopping. The following are just 5 examples of what I’ve noticed in e-tail. If you have spotted one I’ve missed, please leave a comment.

Outlets

Outlets are clearinghouses for old stock. Yes, they are similar to a clearance section except that they usually run on their own domains, but may be linked to the main e-store through tabbed navigation:

Backcountry

Altrec

Esprit

Deal of Day

It all started with Woot.com’s concept of one item every day at a ridiculously low price until it’s gone. Now the deal of day concept has been adopted by many retailers, both as microsites…

BabySteals

…and on retail sites:

Geeks.com

Altrec

Newegg Shell Shocker

Bluefly does a 2-hr lunchtime “Quickie” deal each day.

Certainly this is no longer a novelty since there’s so many retailers using daily deals. But it is a way to keep customers checking in with you on a regular basis (hopefully daily), and to blow out old inventory.

Vente Privee (Private Sale)

Rue La La is an exclusive, invite-only e-store where members can shop from private sale boutiques, each open for only a few days.

Members earn $10 kickbacks when their invitees place their first order. Like a sample sale, items are deeply discounted and are available for sale until their limited quantities are snapped up.

Unlike deal-of-day sites, the vente privee is a collection of deals and may span more than one day.

Product Rental

From Bags to Riches and Avella (formerly Bag Borrow or Steal) are like Netflix for handbags (Avelle also carries jewelry, watches and sunglasses).

Rather than shell out thousands on a couture bag, members of these sites can rent a bag and keep it for as long as they like, and return it for something else or keep it for purchase.

The costs of membership, shipping and weekly rental doesn’t make these items cheaper than designer knockoffs, but could help the luxury or aspirational customer stay decked out in couture for less.

Sell Your Gear

Mountain Equipment Co-Op allows customers to advertise their second hand gear and purchase from community members. This is a very generous service from MEC as it may lower overall sales of new items, but it builds goodwill and community which is positive for the brand.

Following up on previous posts about permission marketing and welcome emails for ecommerce websites, I’d like to share my personal experience registering for 87 accounts with the top online retailers and offer some tips for registration form design.

Your site may have several forms that ask for personal information – for email subscriptions, creating an account, entering billing information, requesting help, general contact, creating a wishlist or order tracking. It’s important to note that in my test I was taking initiative to sign up for an account by clicking “Register” or “My Account”. I did not reach these forms in the middle of a checkout process (required registration).

Popular Form Fields and Frequency

1. Password – 100%

Obviously this is a requirement for all sites, but 100% required users to invent their own passwords rather than sending computer-generated temporary passwords (which are terribly annoying). But Dell and Nieman Marcus failed to mention clearly that their passwords require at least one number until you fail at your first password attempt.

2. Repeat Password Field – 89%

Though it takes a small amount of extra time, this is recommended because it’s easy to make errors when you only see **** as you type. How frustrating for customers when they cannot log in because the password they *thought* they entered is wrong.

Continue Reading:
Registration Usability – 87 Registration Forms Tested »

While reviewing the registration process of 87 of the top online retailers, I observed 66% of these sites took advantage of the registration form as a way to remind customers to opt in to email marketing programs by including a check box on the form. However, 57% of these retailers pre-checked the opt-in box, which is poor ‘Netiquette when it comes to permission marketing.

Registration with an ecommerce website is NOT opting in to receive future offers via email. Some marketers may intentionally pre-check the box to increase sign ups, knowing that a number of customers don’t notice the box or will forget to un-check it. Although this might build a bigger list, this practice can backfire.

If your customer was unaware he had opted in, all future emails from that website will look like spam, which is a step backward in building trust and long term customer relationships, hurts your corporate image and dilutes your overall email campaign success. Low open and response rates from uninterested people skews your performance metrics.

Continue Reading:
Registration Usability – Permission Email Dos and Donts »