Marketing to Women Online

What Images Increase Sales to Today's Women?

What are the most important elements in advertisements targeting women?  Quite often - the images.

As we've seen, women sometimes don't respond to/relate to the same images that men do.

So what images do women respond to?

I asked Sally Bjornsen that question.   Sally runs Sally Bjornsen Represents where she represents a select group of photographers.  Ad agencies hire these photographers to do photo-shoots for their clients.  I wanted to talk to Sally for two reasons:

1. She has an extensive advertising background working for companies like Nike and Nordstrom as well as running her own women-focused ad agency.
2. With her current business, she sees firsthand what types of images agencies are looking for today.  

Sally has seen some trends as to what types of images are connecting with consumers, especially female consumers.

Partybeans.com - A Website Designed For Women

I'm always on the lookout for websites that work especially well for women.  I use a set of criteria to rate websites based on research on how women use the Internet and shop online.

Partybeans.com does a great job. 

Here are the reasons why this website does well with women.

Design - This is a clean simple design - not cluttered.  The site uses softer rounded corners which is a design aesthetic women like.  And the color scheme uses female friendly colors. 

Images - The site features positive images of people.  Women want to see not only products, but how people use/react to the product.  The banners flash different occasions giving her ideas of what types of occasions/parties the product can be used for. 

When Should You Offer Free Shipping?

It's a question I'm often asked - Should I offer free shipping?    Is that a smart business decision?

Bottom line, it's a good business decision if it helps you earn more money. 

Yes, there's also the appreciation from customers, especially women, who love free shipping.   But I'm in the business of helping businesses who market to women earn more money.

One reason why you add free shipping is to increase your average order size.  Is your average order size $50?  Than why not offer free shipping for orders over $55.

What I Learned About Women and Design at an Art Show

For the past several months I've been doing a lot of work/research on women and design to see which design elements are most persuasive for women.

After reading Gender, Design and Marketing by Gloria Moss, I thought I'd take my new knowledge based on her book plus my own research and do a completely unscientific test at an art show.

My test was simple -look at a painting and guess whether the artist was male or female. (Then look at the caption to see if the name was male or female). The great thing about this art show was, all the paintings were the same size - so there was some uniformity, which made the research a little easier.  (Rather than trying to take size, material, etc. into consideration).

I wasn't enough of a geek to keep an actual tally of how many I got right or wrong. It was a spur of the moment idea. But it felt like my success rate was better than 50/50.