Darren Herman

Beth Snyder Bulik penned a great article first over at AdAge Digital entitled What Women Want but I thought I’d write a few thoughts here on my blog. For whatever reason, I’ve been spending a bit of time lately looking at the woman audience and their patterns online. From looking and analyzing Glam (the uber-woman’s network) to StyleObserver, and many things in between (including HermanWeb), I’m fascinated with what is happening digitally.  Heck, even Yahoo! launched their woman’s fashion site today.

There are seven areas that Bulik outlines in her great piece for AdAge:

• Women are increasingly consumer more online video
• Frequent shoppers
• Parenting
• Pay for play casual gamers
• Social singles
• Healthy living
• Romance

For this specific blog posting, I’m going to concentrate on frequent shoppers because that’s all I have time for right now (to be honest).
Women are stereotypical shoppers. I can only talk for myself but most women I meet certainly do love shopping and again, in my instance, generally buy most household products on a daily basis. Many marketers single-out males for high ticket purchases and for electronics, but in my case, women are the audience to target because they control the daily purchasing decisions and budget.

When we think of shopping [for women], we think of clothing. This is an area that is getting a lot more interesting online and have spoken with a few folks recently who are innovating in this space. StyleObserver is essentially a mashup of editorial content and pictures. ShopBob is innovating in the space by offering a hi-resolution lookbook. To enable anyone to create a mashup of “looks,” head over to Polyvore and setup an account. They are enabling the mashup of shopping… and it’s certainly peeking my interest.

Use case for Polyvore: My niece is looking for a new outfit for her birthday and puts together jeans from brand, a shirt from another, and shoes from a third brand. Polyvore helps show them all together and allows someone to purchase (potentially) the individual items easily.

What does this all mean? Women are becoming technically sophisticated online with the way they are mashing everything up for their shopping habbits. It’s not just individual women who are doing such, but brands are as well. Look at the way Diane von Furstenberg is communicating with her clients. Online retailers such as Revolve have blogs as well.

If we look at the Internet, we know it can handle commerce. Hence, e-commerce. We also know that an increasing amount of people are spending time online. Women are feeling comfortable spending online. Natural fit for clothing & the Internet? Quite possibly….