About six years ago I was given the gift of breast cancer.
I say gift because it gave me insight into many, many things. No one is more surprised than I am that one of the biggest insights I had was about men. Every morning I take a pill that blocks my estrogen. I’m a different person because of it and I now know how different it feels to have the hormones that lean more toward the typical man. I don’t feel like a man, but I GET men now in a way I didn’t when I had estrogen. I don’t have the same interest in chatter, so I just tune out. I want to get things done more than I want everyone to agree. I stopped worrying about my hair. I stopped wearing makeup. I don’t put the effort into decorating the way I used to. If I need a new shirt, I just buy a new shirt. My expectations for the new shirt have lowered. I didn’t go from Felix Unger to Oscar Madison, I just don’t care as much about how things look. In a weird way, things just aren’t as beautiful.
Does Your Site Do This?
It can with Stylaquin! Stylaquin is the easy to add Shopify app that transforms your website. Stylaquin makes shopping faster, more engaging, and more fun. Stylaquin shoppers stay longer, view over 85% more products, come back more often, and buy more when they do. Find us in the Shopify App Store.
So how does this relate to web design blindspots? Women shop differently than men. In general, women like to shop more than men. When I had an abundance of estrogen, I really enjoyed just looking at new things. Beauty and newness were delicious. Retail therapy did lovely things for my mood. Trying to explain the difference between having estrogen, and not having estrogen, is like trying to explain color to someone who has only seen black and white. The current online shopping experience was designed by men, who (gross generalization coming) don’t gronk spending free time looking at pretty things just because. Of course, the internet, which was designed by men, is geared for the way men shop. You don’t design for something you don’t think matters. Why would you? It’s like asking women who aren’t into sports to design a better system for fantasy football. Why would they?
When online shopping first went mainstream, it was mostly men doing the shopping. A few decades, and one pandemic later, that has changed to women doing most of the online shopping. If you’re selling to women, you need to understand why women shop differently. what they get from browsing, and why it matters to them. I honestly, totally get why it is so hard to see. Thank you cancer. (There are two New York Times best sellers by Dr. Louann Brizendine you should read if you want to get into details. One is called The Female Brain. The other is called The Male Brain. Both are fascinating.)
Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!
The Stylaquin Idea Board keeps customers engaged in two ways: it’s an interactive styling board where shoppers can collect and curate all the things that interest them; and it also acts as a wishlist that shoppers can return to. Find us in the Shopify App Store.
I’ve had a laser focus on how women shop for my entire career as an art director and catalog designer. When you watch people shop online you can see a clear difference between shopping when they know what they want and just need to find it, and browsing. We call this item shopping. Most men are item shoppers. I am now an item shopper. Browsing is different. Browsing is about discovery, beauty, surprise, and delight. As women browse, they save all the things that interest them in separate tabs. When I point this out to men, they laugh and say “Yah, my wife/girlfriend does that.” Men don’t wonder why women open all those tabs, they just think it’s odd behavior, like spending an afternoon wandering through stores and not buying anything. Men assume that women see the world through the same lens that they do. Based on my experience, that is not true. If you’re selling to women, that’s big a blindspot.
“Shrink it and Pink it” Is a design phrase that shows the bias in product design that exists today. There is a difference between how men and women see the world. When I invented Stylaquin, I saw the world through estrogen colored glasses. I knew that my online shopping needs weren’t being met then, but I struggled to explain to my male friends and a whole bunch of male MIT professors why Stylaquin met the needs of women. They just couldn’t see it, and back then I couldn’t see why. I honestly wish there was a way to share our perspectives with each other, but alas, it’s a gift that comes at too high a price to share. The big takeaway for men is that women don’t love shopping for no reason. They aren’t engaging in odd, pointless behavior. Women love shopping more than men do because they get more from the experience than men do.
Stylaquin makes it a simple to accommodate both the item shopper and the browser on the same site. If you have a Shopify site it’s quick and easy to add Stylaquin. If you’re not on Shopify, reach out and we’ll take a look.
