Do you know the main demographic using your website? Is it meant to attract women, men, or both? If targeted toward a specific sex, there are some things you might need to know about how men and women use websites and approach the buying process. So take the following information, gleaned from studies and surveys, and apply it how you think best.

1. Men want to complete the task and get on to the next task. Women want to experience the task. Guys, I know that sounds stupid, like forming a relationship with pain, but this is why women are good at taking care of you. Generally, they seem to be more thorough, which is why she’s never ready when you’re jingling your keys at the door and why you might survive getting stuck in a blizzard once you finally get out the door. (That’s a poor example. She’ll likely know there’s a blizzard coming and will protest leaving at all. Men believe they will defeat the blizzard. Women, I know this sounds stupid, but this is why men are good at killing mammoths, and why they’re good at protecting you. In the end, it’s all about taking down the beast.)
2. On the Web, both genders agree that ease of use is the most important aspect of usability. Pose as a visitor. How easy it is to upload/download/view/purchase? However, men prize download speed over easy navigation, while women place both easy navigation and accessibility ahead of download speed. Customization was the least important to both. 

3. Women are more holistic when shopping. They want to see and weigh all the options, want to be advised, and want to take their time making a decision. One explanation of this is that women tend to think more long term about their purchases: Will this still work in six months? Will I be able to wear this next year?
4. Men want to get in, buy it, get out. They don’t want help unless it involves help at the checkout to speed their exit. They think of immediate need more than long-term need. It’s a very simple thought process: I want to grill some meat. My grill is old and doesn’t cook meat well anymore. I need a new grill to cook meat with, one that makes it easier to cook meat than this old one. I’ll buy a new grill, take it home, grill some meat. Meat grilling problem solved. Women want to know if the grill is easy to clean, if the buttons still work when summer rolls around again, if it looks good in the yard, if you can steam vegetables in it. 

5. Men like coupons because it narrows the choices and provides clear-cut incentive to buy one particular thing they can go in, buy, and get out with. (Think: There is animal. Animal is dead. Now go home, show female, eat animal.)
6. Women prefer sales for exactly the opposite reasons. Sales present many options with many different benefits to many different people other than the woman shopping and the right product is its own reward. They form relationships with the products and then decide which relationship works out best. (Think: There are lots of different berries, nuts, herbs. Some are poisonous. Some make the baby sick. Some go bad quickly. Some are at the top of the mountain and are dangerous to get. Some cost a goat. But this one is good for everybody, is safe to eat and gather, doesn’t cost a goat, and will last through winter.)
7. When it comes to photos, women focus on faces and pay special attention to pictures of couples entwined. Men, as in real life, focus on, well, other parts and don’t give any special attention to couples. Depending on hormone levels, though, women may also focus on, well, other parts.
8. Here’s something men and women generally agree: the color blue. In one survey, 42 percent of people (35 percent of women, 57 percent of men) listed blue as their favorite color. Women’s other favorite color was purple, which actually factored significantly on men’s least favorite color list, right up there with brown and orange, the least favorite colors of everyone. In a fascinating twist, people seem to like more blue and less green as they get older. Green seems to be a young person’s color.

How can you use this information when designing your website? Hold on to that question. The first question is about identifying your target market. Is it young men? Your site should fast, simple, easy to understand, and whatever other usability concern one needs to address to make using the site as quick and painless as possible.

Don’t worry too much about relationships. Men want just as much relationship as is required to successfully complete a transaction. (You don’t want to be friends with the mammoth or think about mammoth orphans when you kill it, you know?) Men like blue, and prefer objects over people, unless the people are naked. A naked girl flipping burgers on a grill against a blue sky and green grass backdrop? Perfect. Now add verbiage emphasizing how quick and easy the check out process is.

This may be why women make 85 percent of purchase decisions. (This is also why women think men are insensitive Neanderthals and don’t believe us when we say we were thinking about nothing. Ladies, it is possible to think about nothing at all, I promise. But it’s not insensitivity. We just have no task before us, and without a task our brains shut down. It’s an efficiency thing, which we’re sure you wouldn’t understand, either. ;-D) 

It’s also why, unless your website is very niche, that when you design a site for general use, you’re really designing a site for women. If you can make it fast and easy, and leave out the purple, men will like it, too. Mint.com grew by 20 percent just by making the site more women-friendly. 

The number of people shopping online on the Monday after Thanksgiving has steadily climbed over the last three years. This season’s 72 million is up from last season’s 60.7 million, which was up from 59 million in 2005.

In total, nearly 32 percent of adults will shop online today, up 17.3 percent over last year, which attracted 27.2 percent.

Online retailers have taken to Cyber Monday as well. Another survey, conducted by Shop.org and Shopzilla, 72.2 percent of online retailers were planning a special promotion for today, up from 42.7 percent two years ago. Promotions include special deals, one-day sales, and offers of free shipping.

Online shoppers have already been out in digital droves, spending a record $531 million on Black Friday alone. Online spending on Black Friday and Cyber Monday are key indicators for how the rest of the season will pan out.   

The three percent conversion average is also consistent across studies by different organizations, according to e-Marketer. That means that 97 percent of shoppers still prefer to buy offline.

Still, there are a few that convert 15-25 percent of the time. Proflowers.com is on top, with a 24.5 percent conversion rate. Following Proflowers is, mainly, apparel sites with a peppering of bookstores and online variety (read: cheap) shops.

Big and Tall or Plus-sized apparel shops are huge online, and sites offering higher sizes make up four out of the top ten converting web stores. That makes sense given the embarrassment overweight people face shopping offline.

There are things we can deduce about the average online shopper from this information (and they’re things that should make intuitive sense to you, as you are also a consumer). The average online shopper seeks: low risk (how much risk is in flowers?); trusted sources; reliability; ease of shopping; information; free or cheap shipping.

I’m not shy about telling you that I fall into the 97 percent reluctant to buy anything beyond flowers, clothing, books, or items of comparable expense. I am looking to buy an HDTV, but you’d have to have a heck a sales pitch to get me to slap down my credit card number and have it shipped to my house without actually looking at the picture quality.

That’s right. No cars, no TVs, no boats, no houses. And yet, and yet, to quote my hero Jorge Borges, I may be persuaded to buy a watch, a set of tires even, perhaps a new Christmas tree, or maybe even that TV I didn’t want to trust you about, if the seller accomplishes certain things.

How to Convince Me (the consumer) to Buy Online Instead of Off:

1.    Website must look professional. The art of seduction always begins with presentation. Sloppy never gets the girls.

2.    Don’t make me look a hundred different places for information. Give me product details until you’ve made me sick with them. Link to product reviews.

3.    Don’t try to be slick by overselling an inferior product. Be honest about why it’s not as good as the higher-priced item. The consumer (that’s me and you) appreciates being able to balance value and affordability. 

4.    Make all serious considerations clear. It builds trust. For example, if the TV’s refurbished or needs an external tuner, let us know up front.

5.    Shipping cost matters. It matters a lot. If I can get the same product at Target for the SAME or lower, I will buy it there. Don’t try to trick me with giant discounts offset with huge shipping costs – it makes me think you’re tying to pull a fast one.

6.    Ease my mind more about the shipping. I worry when kids, wives, mothers, siblings, and products are in transit. I need to know returning the product won’t be a hassle, that I can track it in case something seems lost in the shuffle, and that the seller won’t ship-and-stick me with something I didn’t order.

7.    There needs to be positive user ratings about you and your product easily found. Link me to where people say nice things about you. Link me to where people say nice things about your product.

8.    If you have a sale price, don’t just mark through the original price and make me click to find the new one. That’s annoying and wastes my time – and forms a (small) negative impression.

9.    Don’t make it complicated to buy from you. More than four steps to make a purchase? Forget it, just because your site’s a pain in the butt.

10.    Under-promise, over-deliver, and then deliver, deliver, deliver some more. As an online retailer, you online reputation is the most valuable web property you have. If you get customers gushing about you, other customers will come.     

Hitwise reports that Thanksgiving Day is the peak day for retail traffic as holiday shoppers prepare for the rise-and-shop ritual to take place on Black Friday. Cyber Monday was almost 34 percent less, in terms of overall traffic, than Thanksgiving, and over 26 percent less than Black Friday.

According to Hitwise’s numbers, Walmart.com and BestBuy.com unseated Amazon.com as the most visited site during this time. But by Cyber Monday, Amazon regained the top spot.

But Nielsen//NetRatings, comparing Black Friday and Cyber Monday only, says it may be just how you look at it. Measuring the audience (perhaps number of people in the car rather than the car itself?), Nielsen says home-shoppers on Black Friday outnumbered work-shoppers on Cyber Monday by nearly three million visitors.

A little over 19 million at-home visitors piled into eBay, Amazon, and Wal-Mart on Black Friday, compared to just over 16 million surfing into those same stores on Cyber Monday from work.

But there’s a big HOWEVER. Nielsen also says that, when home and work traffic are combined, Cyber Monday is still the reigning champion. Cyber Monday drew in a combined unique audience of 29.5 million.

The National Retail Foundation’s Ellen Davis confirms that Cyber Monday was a big day for CyberMonday.com. Drawing about 500,000 page views per hour, Shop.org had to add a server to handle all the traffic. She says Best Buy was the recipient of most downstream traffic from the site, followed Target, and Circuit City.

Of course, it doesn’t necessarily matter to the online retailer which day is busiest. All days, all the way up until the last shipping day before Christmas, are nothing but busy. With all the Cyber Monday hoopla, though, they are definitely preparing earlier.

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