Sharing the love: how men and women shop for Valentine gifts
We decided to get into the Valentine’s Day spirit by pitting men against woman in an online shopping showdown.
We set members of the public the task of shopping online for Valentine’s Day gifts. And we monitored them with eye-tracking equipment – to make sure they didn’t fib about what they were up to.
Women are easily distracted
Women like to shop, that’s no big news. They like to shop so much they can find it hard to stay focused on their objectives. We asked them to find presents for their partners. But they ended up looking through ladies’ jeans, CDs and handbags. When we asked what they were doing, they told us they’d decided to get themselves presents instead.
Men are goal-oriented
Men knew what they wanted to find and they went straight to it. There was very little browsing or comparing. And when we asked where their ideas came from, most said ‘my girlfriend told me what to get’.
Check the date: Eye tracking shows that men (top) spent a lot of time checking the date of Valentine's Day. Women (bottom) didn't need to.
How could you forget?
Our eye-tracking showed that men kept glancing at the date of Valentine’s Day – as though they couldn’t quite believe it was on February 14th. That prominent date encouraged men to get shopping, urgently.
Persuasive design
Great online stores like M&S and John Lewis haven’t come about by accident. They have been carefully designed to be as persuasive as possible.
They want to draw women into browsing (because they’ll top up their baskets) and get men to buy quickly (because they haven’t any patience for shopping).
Eye-tracking helps us learn user behaviours and design websites to work better for our clients and see crucial behaviour that would otherwise go unnoticed.
About the author
Steve loves taking user test results and putting them in to design solutions. He has a background in design and media that he puts in to practice when he creates prototypes to test with. Steve enjoys making Flash based computer games, that have bizarre storylines! Email Steve, or call +44 (0)117 946 3930
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This is a nicely timed publicity piece.
I think that most men could not believe their eyes when someone had arranged for Valentines day to be on the same day as the FA cup.