The New York Times has a rare "can't-miss" article about the purchasing power and Internet adoption of the 50+ yr. olds in the US. Excerpted:
Ms. Dougherty said a recent Nielsen survey found that 27.4 million people age 55 and older bought something online in the last six months, compared with about 26 million a year ago. By contrast, the number of adults who bought something online in the last year actually dropped, to 107.4 million from 112 million.
Ms. Dougherty said that since last June, senior citizens have bought clothing, shoes, flowers and gifts at a faster rate than the population in general.
To me, those statistics are massively compelling and signal a significant change in how web designers, developers and yes, SEO/Ms, too must conduct online campaigns.
Mr. Byck cited figures from the United States Census Bureau that showed while 40 percent of the United States population was 50 or older, this group held 75 percent of the nation's financial assets and did 55 percent of all consumer spending. "Without sounding overly harsh, in many ways marketers have taken the 50-plus market for granted," Mr. Byck said. "The reality is that you can't do that anymore."
Ms. Dougherty of Nielsen said one reason businesses had overlooked older consumers was that they were fixated on the 18-to-34-year-old market. Both online and off, the younger group has been heavily pursued by companies who think people's buying preferences are sealed during this span.
"To assume someone at 35 has made all their decisions about brands for the rest of their lives is utterly ridiculous," Ms. Dougherty said. "A lot of companies have an antiquated way of looking at older people, which makes little sense when you look at how much more disposable income they have now."
I rarely make big decisions based on media, but I think that some serious research and possibily a bit more older-demographic-focused usability testing is in order for several of our clients. The tough dichotomy is that these older demographics don't run blogs, don't post to social tagging sites, don't control links and media on the web and rarely are "influencers" of online trends. Thus, there's some issues of duality in terms of how to create a succesful brand online - we won't see MySpace or Flickr or Technorati shifting their focus to these demographics, but if you run a classic e-commerce site, especially one where older consumers could be a significant portion of your market, you cannot afford to ignore designing and building with their demographic in mind.
Any thoughts on how to keep a "Web 2.0" profile (to help attract links and attention from the "Linkerati") while successfully appealing to older consumers?
I certainly know there is one thing out there that is being overlooked on a wide scale in web design, and that's the simple fact that the eyesight of the elderly is often less than perfect.
This struck us early on when being hired by older folks to build their websites, and they commented that the type was hard to read on the pages. Something that seems so simple...but honestly, how will people buy your products if they can't read the description?
This strikes me as being particularly important for industries like the Home & Garden, and Hobbies markets where I'd say MOST of the shoppers will be 50+ . Something to think about, for sure.
I totally agree with all this. Boomers may not know what we know, but -guess what- neither does anyone else.
I suspect that we're so used to hanging out in webmaster/SEO/whatever forums that we don't end up in places where they hang out. There are *huge* communities out there -- look at some of the sites where you can post questions/opinions about consumer products. Or, I recently ran across a blog for older women; they discussed *everything*, even politics -- no holds barred, yet in the most polite way possible.
hmmm.... old farts might be a bigger market than China
Rand - the writing has been on the wall for quite some time.
The baby boomers are out there and they have time and money. They have time to play with new technology and more and more are arriving on the web and they have the money to spend too.
If you're not targeting your marketing towards them then you're really missing out. There have been some interesting reports appearing over on eMarketer.com that have shown that us boomers have already started to make a big impact on the Net.
I should also add that baby boomers are grandparents and grandparents love to buy things for their grandkids and lots of those things are impulse buys - just ask me I know - the wife came home with a tricycle the other day for one of the grandkids and all she had gone to buy was a handset to use with our netphone.
Rand:
I met some guys that, among other things, do internet based member recruitment for AARP (all members are over 50!). Not that the web is the number 1 method for member recruitment, but it has become the fastest growing method for member recruitment for that huge association.
This week I chatted with a couple over 60. When they look up something locally they never ever touch the yellow pages they look up everything on the web. When they schedule trips its always on the web.
The over 50 crowd may not be as literate on the web...but search is easy, fascinating and better than the old sources.
Dave