New research, detailed on techcrunch.com, confirms what we have already known about women online- they outnumber men in social media and engage heftily in online shopping. But little did we know the true extent of how much women contribute to both the activity and the profits of both social media and e-commerce websites, undoubtedly two of the biggest growing spheres of the internet, with new data revealing their contribution is much more significant than expected.
Women have a greater presence than men on nearly all social media sites- Facebook, Twitter, Myspace (in fact Digg.com is the only major social network which has more male members than female), but what the studies reveal is that women are also the most active participants.
Women on Facebook;
- contribute to 62% of messages, status updates and comments
- spend 30% more time than men on the site
- have 7% more friends than men
Not only this, but women contribute to 55% of the mobile social networks, with over a third of women with smartphones using them to browse and purchase online (compared with only 26% of men).
Women are also growing in the field of e-commerce- with sites consistently boasting more female than male users (Groupon have a whopping 77% female users). And all of these sites are growing fast- Groupon boasting a ($US) 760 million profit in 2010, and Zappos- an e-bay style site selling clothes and shoes, generating over ($US) 1 billion last year.
As expected, there has been a growth in the number of online stores geared specifically at women, but even gender-neutral shopping sites have a greater female presence than male. Chegg, a textbook rental company for university students in the US, has a 65% female customer base, even though the number of students at each campus is roughly equally divided between men and women. Aileen Lee believes this is because as a gender, women have a tendency to plan and make less snap decisions than men, meaning all forms of online shopping appeal to women because of their comparison options.
The role of women as a driving force in both e-commerce and social media is great for sites like Facebook, which have stepped up the level of innovation when it comes to shopping directly on their site (something we’ve already written about here). It seems that women are exploiting the way we use the internet to suit them, and in the process are shaping the development of both social media and online shopping.
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