I heard this today during the presentation of Marco Merkx from Orange on the Marketing3 conference in The Netherlands. I was following this on streaming video – long live technology – and I found it to be an interesting quote. It was related to their launch of Belle.nl, a mobile e-commerce that is targetted to women. It’s all about fashion, phones and lifestyle is what you can read on the site.
Now to come back to the quote, I wondered if I could find something related to this on the web and found a good post about this:
“When we say men dig, what they’re doing is very intense – they’re doing a lot of research, jumping to different sites, comparison shopping, reading reviews – they are out, really, on a focused mission,” Johns says. “So we’re not saying ‘create a very complex experience.’ Instead, easily allow them within that product page to serve up deeper product information.” Including expert reviews is a good idea, he says. “That’s what men want.”
In contrast, women, “when they go to the product page, are like ‘this is cool – what else is there?’ They’re not so much concerned with all the details around it – yet. They want to easily scan and see what else is available in a similar category. “So if they’re looking at blouses, they want to be able to quickly scan what other blouses are out there.”
For women that is definitely an online version of window shopping, and it looks like Belle.nl is a neat example for that.
Tags: e-commerce, men, women, shopping
'Cross The Breeze 
Now I’m not a woman, so I can’t say whether you’re right or wrong about Merckx’s statement, but I do know that just about anybody – man or woman – can see that the articles on Belle.nl are actually the work of a (good) copy-writer, ordered by Orange. It’s all about selling the product, whereas readers expect more from a real “magazine”. Either you’re a shop, either a magazine, but the indefinite nature of Belle.nl is something that has never caught on before (and never will, if you ask me).
I think belle.nl sucks! “De wereld is een catwalk”? Pardon? Also, they should be punished for abuse of the word “mobile”. I thought it would be woman-oriented website for mobile devices, like pda’s or internet-enabled smartphones. Turns out they’re only trying to sell mobile phones.
Bleh.
It is indeed an online store, that is presented in a magazine style way. I found it interesting that they try this in a different way, but since I’m not a woman it is hard to say whether that makes sense. From the comments here though it seems like it’s not.