Catering to Users’ Styles 06-21-2005
A major part of design for any medium is clearly understanding its audience. Gap clothing understands this and is tailoring their stores to better fit with what their customers expect to get out of a shopping experience.
In the clothing industry knowing what the customers like and what their methods for shopping are is critical for profitability. In terms of shopping methods, the major unisex stores such as Gap, H&M, and Urban Outfitters pretty much use a one size fits all model for merchandise placement–one which predominantly falls in line with how women shop.
From my own experience, for the most part I hate shopping for clothes. Typically I know what I want and hope that I can get in and get out as quickly as possible. My recent trip to California made it blatantly clear that women, namely my girlfriend, enjoy browsing while shopping for clothes.
Business 2.0 recently reported on how the Gap clothing company has redesigned some of their stores to better fit how their customers shop for clothing. Most importantly, they are responding to the differences in how men and women shop. According to Gap’s research, women prefer an exploratory shopping experience with a boutique feel–one in which merchandise is separated into small “rooms” and accessories are placed throughout the store. While men desire a more straight forward shopping experience in which merchandise is broken down into the essentials to create outfits and neatly organized for quick access to sizes and colors. Even going as far as providing separate entrances and different décor.
The research has paid off–customers are buying more and staying longer at the newly renovated stores.
While I’m mostly talking about bricks and mortar business, the methods which Gap employed are extremely relevant to designing for the Web. The simple concept is that conducting an analysis of your audience can make the design process less about guess work and more about providing a user experience your users will appreciate. And there will be positive results (assuming you’ve done your homework well). Are we going to provide separate links for men and women–probably not, but with the knowledge about our users we can better serve them.