WWW Now Stands for World Women Web

10 years ago, I was perplexed by the discrepancy between women's purchasing power and their hesitation to buy online. I ran a fancy regression analysis and discovered that privacy concerns were the leading barriers to women coming on board full force. As confirmed by a recent report from comScore, Women on the Web, this issue is far behind. According to comScore, U.S. online women are the key drivers of Web purchases. They make more transactions online and they spend more than men. In fact, they are responsible for 58 percent of e-commerce dollars. 

Globally, women are slightly less likely than men to be online (46 percent vs. 54 percent). However once women go online, they are more connected than men. Across Latin America, Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, women spend more time than men on social networking, emailing and sending IM messages. Health, apparel and family/parenting sites have the widest reach among women worldwide.

The study also offers insights on smartphone usage in the US and in Europe. As of April 2010, men are more likely than women to use smartphones in the US (60 percent vs. 40 percent) and in Europe (63 percent vs 37 percent). Yet it's important to note that women are taking to social networking apps on their smartphones. If their PC networking habits are any indication, as smartphone usage becomes mainstream, women will shape this medium as well. 

To download the full comScore study, please click here. 

Posted via email from dotwom's posterous

Social Media Engagement Works

The greatest benefit of building your brand's presence in social media is earning share of voice and establishing long-term relations. It's not just about the number of fans or the number of followers. There are many residual benefits, such as brand affinity and advocacy. Consumers who are engaged with your brand in social media are more likely to search for the brand's products, more likely to buy from that brand and more likely to click through links they see about the brand.

Here is further evidence from a recent study by GroupM Search and comScore:


- Consumers using social media are 1.7 times more likely to search with the intension of making a list of brands or products to consider purchasing compared with the average internet user.

- Consumers exposed to influenced social and paid search exhibit 223% heavier search behavior than consumers exposed to paid alone.

- 50% of social-media exposed searchers search daily for product terms, compared with 33% of non-exposed searchers.

- In organic search, consumers searching on brand product terms who have been exposed to a brand’s social marketing campaign are 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links leading to the advertiser’s site than the average user seeing a brand’s paid search ad alone.

More details on the study results are here.