Finding differences between men and women, and left-handers and right-handers can deepen customer engagement through ecommerce ergonomics, according to a study released last month by Paris-based Content Square.
Titled, “Ecommerce and Behavioural Differences,” the study of 4,000 French participants focused on browsing recordings on roughly 20 ecommerce sites.
Content Square used a methodology that analyzed the following indicators: number of sessions, number of clicks, display time, active time, inactive time, interaction rate (active time / display time), scroll rate, last displayed line on screen, viewed pages, viewed product pages rate, average hesitation before click.
Here are some eye-opening results:
Men versus Women:
Women interact more and are faster than men
Women click 30% more on the website than men
Women’s activity rate is 11% higher than men
Women view 12% more pages than men
They hesitate 10% less than men before clicking on an element of the page
They purchase 7% faster than men
On average, women are more active than men on ecommerce websites. They interact more, display more pages, and purchase in a shorter time.
Ratio between interaction time and display time / Average hesitation time before click
Women are picture-oriented while men are detail-oriented
Women’s path differ from men’s one on the product pages of E-Commerce websites. They display much more pictures, while men are interested in product descriptions and read them.
Left-handers versus right-handers:
Left-handers’ browsing behaviour is slower than right-handers
Right-handers click 8% more than left-handers
Left-handers take 20% more time to click than right-handers
To purchase, left-handers are 30% slower than right-handers
Compared to right-handers, left-handers mostly use the left part of the menu
A left-hander has 29% less chances to hover over the menu’s right tabs. The menu, key browsing element, isn’t wholly used by left-handers. Pages and menus aren’t yet adapted to left-handers.
Young people versus seniors:
Few differences remain between digital natives’ and seniors’ browsing behaviour
Young people interviewed: 18-34 years old
Seniors interviewed: 45-64 years old
Between young people and seniors, click rate and display time are almost similar. Seniors are equally active.
Seniors view 4% less pages than digital natives
Notable difference: Hesitation time is 30% higher for seniors. They spend more time before clicking
Seniors have equivalent click rate to digital natives and are equally active. That doesn't seem necessary to adapt your ecommerce website depending on generations.
What’s more, here are additional statistics revealed in the study:
Internet users display 20% more pages when it is raining than when the weather is sunny
Blondes take 30% more time to click than brunettes
Brunettes average hesitation time before click: 0.49 seconds
Men average hesitation time before click is 13% higher than brunettes
Blondes average hesitation time before click is 30% higher than brunettes
People who declared being under the influence of alcohol clicked 20% less than sober people.
Blue-eyed people hesitate 9% more before clicking than brown-eyed people.
“We remain convinced that behavioral patterns are different from one web user to another, depending on structural variables (culture, gender, period of time),” Content Square CEO Jonathan Cherki said in the study. “We had an intuition that there was a difference of behavior between women and men, right-handed and left-
handed people when shopping online, but this intuition has yet had to be proven. The study allowed us to validate that theory as it implies that customizing the customer journey is more than ever relevant and efficient!”