I admit it. I am a demanding consumer. But, aren't we all? We want everything better, faster, easier, and more personalized than ever before. We want to feel like we're important to the companies we do business with. But why is it that despite every marketing milestone and breakthrough many web experiences often fail to meet our expectations?

Blame company structure or budget or legacy systems or leadership or the weather. But the more you excuse it, the worse it gets.

I've made a career out of studying, advocating for, and creating customer experiences and sharing them with clients, in columns, speeches, a book, and now this blog.

So, forget the excuses. Here you'll find a consumer perspective on what works, what doesn't, who's getting it right, and who's still in the dark.

Straight-forward. Unfiltered. Customer fanaticism.




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October 07, 2005

Williams–Sonoma and CB2 Favored By Both Women and Men

We didn't expect it....women and men agreed on something!

In our recent Gender Agenda research, both chose the same 2 sites as their favorites from a list of top sites. Aren't women from Venus and men from Mars? Maybe so, but it appears there is at least one area where the planets align.

Different, but similar
Yes, men's and women's behavior and attitudes ARE profoundly different online (more about this in a later entry) but when it comes to overall design appeal, they have remarkably similar tastes.

A density matrix
We developed a testing matrix that plotted homepages of 18 different sites ranging from those that were heavily product-focused to largely lifestyle-driven, and those that visually looked to have a high density of design elements and content to those that appeared to be low density.

We removed 2 potential biases from our test: 1) all logos or brand names for each site, and 2) any of our own design work for clients. The list of sites included in the study were: OfficeMax, Crutchfield, B&N, Dell, Sears, Home Depot, Old Navy, Google, Bluefly, CB2, GE, REI, Williams-Sonoma, Gap, Disney, G4, JCrew, and Nokia.

Striking a balance
We expected some preference overlap, but truthfully, we expected women to migrate to lifestyle-driven sites with simple, uncluttered design. We expected men to migrate to product-driven, high density pages with an abundance of links. Not so. Not so at all.

Women AND men chose Williams-Sonoma and CB2 as their #1 and #2 favorite sites from this list. Why? Because they do a lot of things well -- yet differently, I might add. Both are moderately dense. Both balance lifestyle content and photography with product.

Williams-Sonoma tells a story
Williams–Sonoma has a dominant, single merchandising story with many ways to enter the experience. Women and men were drawn to the seductive lifestyle photography and commented that the emphasis on a single idea was pleasing and easy to understand --  as was the case with "Shredded Beef Tacos" because it was anchored by relevant products such as the  Manual Tortilla Press and the All-Clad Slow Cooker.

Bf1r

CB2 creates compelling drama
CB2 had a different approach. They divided the screen with a hero product on the right -- and inviting, edgy copy – "Four Speed Convertible" – flanked by navigation and category product images.

Cd1

Neither gender liked product-only sites. Neither gender liked lifestyle only sites. However, women were enticed first by lifestyle, then product. Men were enticed first by product and then lifestyle.

Across the board, many sites fail to engage with high-quality photography, single merchandising stories, and relevant copy. Getting this right can be a key to mastering the most overlooked segmentation on the web: gendered marketing.

October 7, 2005 in Resource Research, Retail | Permalink | Bookmark

Comments

This all seems very interesting. By far a topic that can spawn a blog on its own. "Gendered Marketing."

A quick question, how much does it say of the brand whether the firm is more lifestyle oriented vs. product oriented? Should some firms use one more than the other to communicate their brand more effectively? Do you have an example of a firm that may not communicate their brand as effectively as possible, becuase they are too lifestyle or product oriented and should be the other way around?

Just curious.

Thank you.

Posted by: Patrick | Oct 11, 2005 7:14:50 PM

I do think a product or lifestyle skew is a legitimate gender-sensitive brand strategy as long as it is balanced with specific, attainable products. A brand like Crutchfield, for example, is currently geared toward men and is product-heavy with few, if any, lifestyle references. A gender-sensitive approach might lead with product but leverage lifestyle to present the product with more sex appeal and emotion in order to better get the attention of the male consumer. Lifestyle, in this instance, is about the product itself becoming more exciting and interesting.

On the other hand, another balancing move for the Crutchfield brand might be to include storylines that appeal to women. For women, lifestyle takes on a different dimension than it does for men. It's more than a sexy product shot and snappy copy. Lifestyle storylines for women need to also include context and the payoff they are looking for, such as, "how will this improve my life?"

Another company we evaluated that leaned too far toward lifestyle was Nokia. It featured a main menu dominated by friends laughing together, supported by a few links. While women liked this image, they were frustrated that there were not obvious product references. And men liked this site the least because they couldn't understand why Nokia wasn't speaking to them through products.

Posted by: Kelly Mooney | Oct 17, 2005 4:00:01 PM

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