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123webguru News Desk
Women Are Keen to Shop Online. Merchants Are Eager to Oblige.
INTERNET merchants are starting to pay more attention to the group chiefly responsible for propping up the industry's growth: women.
While online sales growth has slowed in categories traditionally dominated by male buyers, like computer hardware and software, sales of cosmetics, fragrances, home goods and other items typically aimed at female shoppers have soared.
"We've seen this trend coming for a few years, but now we're actually seeing the numbers come in," said Carrie Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research and the author of a report on online sales that was issued late last month by Shop.org, an industry trade group.
According to the report, sales of cosmetics and fragrances grew 58 percent last year, while sales of health and beauty products and home goods jumped by more than 33 percent over the previous year. Sales of computer hardware and software grew just 13 percent. Over all, online commerce sales increased 24 percent.
Ms. Johnson and other analysts attribute the trend to the increasing online experience of women, who were slower than men to embrace the Internet but are now increasingly relying on it to buy goods. Additionally, online merchants are developing new features and services for women shoppers that would be difficult to replicate offline.
Take the Lands' End Swim Finder feature, introduced this spring. The service lets women choose swimsuits that "enhance or de-emphasize" certain body areas, allowing a shopper to see a version of the suit on a three-dimensional likeness of her body.
According to Ed Whitehead, the chief marketing officer of Lands' End, which is a division of Sears, the feature demonstrates how online retailers are changing the way they sell to women.
"This channel has always been very transactional," Mr. Whitehead said. "You can go online and check out, but it hasn't given you any kind of experience. We had a few tools like that, but we really didn't talk about them."
Mr. Whitehead said customer research helped the company understand just how much women hate shopping for swimsuits. "It's a horrifying experience," he said, citing problems such as "poorly lit rooms, children or husbands in tow" and a shortage of sales clerks in many stores.
Mr. Whitehead would not quantify how much the Swim Finder service has helped business, saying only that sales are "fantastic right now." Those sales, he added, have been followed by fewer returns and customer service calls than past swimsuit sales, because women are more likely to be satisfied with their purchases.
According to a report released last week by the research and consulting firms ForeSee Results and FGI Research, such online sales features could be making a difference with female shoppers.
The firms surveyed customers of the 40 most popular online retailers and found that on a 100-point scale, women were more satisfied than men with online shopping. Overall satisfaction scores were 85 for women and 80 for men in 2004.
According to Ms. Johnson, of Forrester, that satisfaction level does not extend to an important subset of women - those age 35 and younger. Ms. Johnson said that in a recent Forrester survey, of the 28 percent of North Americans who have not shopped online, those 35 and younger showed some of the strongest resistance to online shopping. Among other things, young women objected to high shipping costs and to waiting for items to be delivered. Also, 23 percent of the group did not have credit or debit cards - more than twice the online average.
Online retailers can ill afford to let young women stray, because women make a vast majority of purchasing decisions once they have families. "Most retailers focus on young men, but they're already sold on online shopping," Ms. Johnson said.
Ms. Johnson said that as retailers seek more efficient ways to sell, they risk losing sight of merchandising elements that women might appreciate. The Web is "not focused enough on the experience of shopping - nothing flashy, just engaging people in a way that makes them feel comfortable, loyal and satisfied," she said.
Felix Carbullido, who oversees Gap.com, said such an effort involved a delicate balance. "We're not walking away from convenience, but we definitely want to capture more of the emotional side of the shopping experience," he said.
To do that, Mr. Carbullido said Gap.com had more aggressively expanded its editorial features, including tips on dressing for various occasions. The site has also enhanced its swimsuit-assistant feature to allow women to see how a suit looks on a model, and from behind. In addition, the site last month upgraded a feature helping women choose the right bra to go with some clothing.
The prevalence of high-speed Internet connections also helps the site market to women more effectively, Mr. Carbullido said, because it can offer things like music downloads. In a recently completed promotion, Gap.com visitors could download a free song from the singer Joss Stone - a promotion that was particularly successful with the site's younger users.
For Amazon.com, whose practices are closely watched and often imitated, an emotionally engaging shopping experience is, simply enough, one that is convenient and cheap.
Among the site's most recent additions are categories aimed at women shoppers, like gourmet food and wedding merchandise. Ms. Johnson, of Forrester, pointed to the wedding category, in particular, as a departure for Amazon, in that it is rife with editorial features, video and photography aimed at appealing to women shoppers.
But according to Kathy Savitt, a vice president at Amazon, the wedding section is different from other Amazon categories because its users require more coaching about how to outfit a household, for instance, than other users, and not because the site is shifting its philosophy on how to reach women.
"We've tried to appeal to things we think both men and women like, which are low prices, convenience and selection," Ms. Savitt said. "Those are very gender-agnostic marketing points. Women prefer low prices and great selection over marketing gimmicks any day."
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