Appeal to affluent women
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Marketing to affluent women online
Web design elements that convince affluent women to visit and buy more often
Marketing to affluent women online is an art all its own. That's our specialty, so we're particular ... but it's still surprisingly hard to find companies that are doing it quite well.
Below you'll find some practical tips and examples: a handful of elegant business websites that have struck the right balance of simplicity, sophistication, and temptation for affluent women consumers.
Affluent American consumers are online... and there are plenty of them
Why are affluent women so desirable to savvy marketers?
Aside from the affluent market's deeper pocketbooks and the rise of the female consumer as the most influential buyers in the nation, the affluent tend to make excellent use of company websites. In July 2008, the Luxury Institute announced the results of a poll of affluent Americans with annual incomes of $150,000 or more. A full 64% of these well-to-do consumers said they go to company websites for information on luxury goods and services—a higher ranking than those who rely on recommendations of friends and family (57% of respondents). Affluent womensurprising stats One in five women earn more than twice their significant other's salary... and that number is rising as the wage gap narrows. (Source: Women's Health | Marketing to Women Datafile )
There are plenty of them, too. A 2010 Pew Research Center study found 95% of Americans living in a household earning $75,000 or more per year use the Internet—25% more than lesser-earning households. Most go online several times a day, and 88% use the web to conduct research on a product or service before buying, 83% make travel reservations online, and 81% purchase products online.
High Internet use and online buying research habits also held true for affluent households with $150,000 or more per year. In fact, the study found that a high income level is a predictor of Internet use unaffected by other demographic factors such as age, education level, or location.
Many of them are ready and willing to trade up, even in the current economic environment. Mass affluent consumer expert Michael J. Silverstein notes in Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World's Largest, Fastest Growing Market that women are willing to trade up in a number of categories:
~ 23% of women are willing to pay as much as they can for the very best food (#1 of the top 10)
~ 17% of women are willing to pay as much as they can for the very best house or apartment (#4)
~ 12% of women are willing to pay as much as they can for the very best restaurants (#7)
~ 11% of women are willing to pay as much as they can for the very best furniture (#10)
Bolstering these numbers are the number of women who are willing to spend "somewhat more" in the same categories; for instance, in the case of the last category, an additional 39% of women are willing to spend somewhat more for the best furniture.
And while the economy is still the top concern for 47% of the affluent, according to the 2010 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, mass affluent and affluent women are increasingly loosening their purse strings as the nation recovers from the recession. The 2010 holiday season broke a key ecommerce record, and on January 10, 2011 the Wall Street Journal reported luxury retailers were continuing strong comebacks, with Saks posting an 11.8% gain in December (well above the expected 3.9%) and Nordstrom reporting an 8.4% gain rather than the 3.4% forecasted.
Marketing to affluent women with clean, appealing web design
The affluent female consumer is ready to be impressed and convinced to buy... but she has increasingly discerning taste. The early days of the Internet, when simply having an online presence was enough, are long gone. Today, high design is everywhere, from Target to TV reality shows, and the worldwide web is no exception.
The typical well-to-do woman is also busy—very busy. According to Gallup, 75% of mass affluent women juggle multiple major responsibilities, including work (67% of mass affluent women work), marriage, and/or children.
This schedule overload directly affects businesses marketing to affluent shoppers online. With less time available, well-to-do women are less likely to wade through websites looking for what they need... and faced with cluttered webpages, many will leave, never to return.
"People don't typically react well to rooms full of clutter, so why would they with a web page?" notes Peter Prestipino in Website Magazine's The Psychology of Web Design. "Part of this sort of response has to do with how we associate open space with emotional or physical comfort, and our basic survival instincts—when we feel spatially constricted, our primary concern is finding a way out. Often referred to as fight-or-flight, this response comes down to one result on the web: leaving the website. And once a user leaves with a bad impression, they won't likely return."
A clutter-free website is just one component required to appeal to affluent women; the design also has to appeal to them long enough to stay and explore more. Consumer buying behavior expert Paco Underhill, author of What Women Want, describes it this way: "How do Web designers make a Web presence a daily ritual, a pleasure, an up-to-the-moment indulgence, or a place of escape?"
He goes on to describe websites that aren't doing just this. "If you're after a female-unfriendly website, check out the Web presences of some of the office product superstores. Talk about bone-dry. They're like tool catalogues—their straightforwardness is their own worst enemy," he writes, adding, "Hotel.com and Travelocity are so business-focused they forget all about romancing the casual Internet browser." This is all the more surprising given the fact that according to BusinessWeek, women purchase $44.5 billion in office supplies each year, and according to Here Media, 70% of all travel decisions in the US are made by women.
Still, a clean and appealing website design is only the tip of the iceberg. Read on...
Essential elements of affluent web design
So what are the principles of the simple, sophisticated design that will attract such affluent women customers... and keep them coming back? We've listed eight web design elements below.
1. Visual space to breathe
White space (the "empty" space on a website) plays one of the most important roles in web design for affluent audiences.
"Ample white space ... lends websites a light and airy feel, making them uncongested and easy on the eyes," writes Patrick McNeil in The Web Designer's Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide to Themes, Trends, and Styles in Website Design. "White sets the mood. Its clean, professional, high-end connotations present the company in a positive light." White space does not actually have to be pure white, but when it's not, it's typically quite pale.
The Fresh website below includes a large amount of products and information in a variety of categories, which could easily overwhelm... but thanks to the designers' use of white space, the website is airy and clean, allowing the visitor's eye plenty of room to breathe.
2. High-end photography
Websites that can pull off this kind of affluent appeal feature professionally shot photography of amazing quality.
At this level, snapping away with the business owner's digital camera will not do the trick, no matter how much natural talent you have. A simple test: if you took just one photograph from a website design, printed it, and framed it in a white matte and simple, narrow frame, would it look like art? The images on the Vera Wang on Weddings website below meet this test.
3. Intuitive website navigation
Navigation—the links on a webpage leading to other areas of a website—must be intuitive and easy.
The name and purpose of each link should be crystal clear. If you have more than a handful of menu links, consider grouping them in smaller sections, with more essential links along the top or left side of the page, where visitors look first. Save buttons for calls to action: use a simple web font or elegantly stylized text for each menu. (The J. W. Daigler website below does this nicely.)
4. Clean web design
The more upscale the website, the cleaner the lines, sometimes to the point of being almost spare.
Lines are generally fine—one point or less—and sections of the website are clearly partitioned—whether with borders or without—naturally guiding the eye. On the I'On Group website below, nothing distracts the viewer from the center of attention (the homes and neighborhoods); the understated design elements and artistic use of typography surrounding each product shot enhance rather than detract.
5. A restrained color palette
A few carefully selected colors, placed with a practiced eye, allows the product or site photography to be the star of the show. Web designers experienced in designing for affluent consumers typically restrain themselves to two to three colors on each webpage.
Ideally, the colors chosen are warm or fresh, and always inviting. In What Women Want, Underhill quotes a highly successful female executive who had been visiting luxury hotels across the globe for years, trying out and rejecting multiple cutting-edge hotels—many of them designed dazzyingly by men in ways that failed to take into the account the needs of women travelers. "'They concentrate on style, not people,’" he quotes her as saying... and color definitely comes into play in her evaluation of the spaces: "Every color is cool. There are no earth tones. They think they have earth tones, but when an earth tone has that much gray in it, it’s not an earth tone anymore. … You don’t walk into one of these hotels and say, Wow, I feel comfortable.'"
The same principle applies online.
The Tiffany & Co. website below is a classic example: aside from white, only shades of the famous Tiffany robin's egg blue (a fresh shade of blue reminiscent of blues in nature), black, and gray grace each page, allowing Tiffany's timeless jewelry and stunning product photography to shine.
6. A clean website background
We're always astounded when we visit the websites of high-end hotels only to be greeted by a loud, busy wallpaper background plastered across our screens. If you've watched home staging shows, you've seen the reactions of home shoppers encountering wallpaper on real walls: they grimace and physically pull back.
Why expect anything different on the web? Well-designed websites keep it simple: only pure white, or perhaps a pale shade or gradient, surrounds the webpage, providing breathing space for the page design and products.
The web designers of Calistoga Ranch's website below make wise use of white space; a wallpaper background would have competed badly with the images showcased online. (A subtle gradient or rich, neutral shade like chocolate brown can also be used to advantage, but it must be done carefully and kept simple.)
7. A clear visual hierarchy
The eye should always know where to fall. If you've ever visited a website and immediately felt confused or uneasy, it was likely because like you didn't know where to look first: many visual elements were competing for your attention at once.
The Cupcake website below guides the website visitor's eye through each page: the eyes are drawn first to the large photo on each page, then to a box featuring a particular cupcake, then to the page's content, and last but not least, back up the menu of links along the right side of the page in an easy "Z".
8. Transparency
A tool employed by some companies marketing to affluent women, a strategically placed transparency overlay can add a certain serene silkiness to a website. The effect can be subtle or bring to mind pure, sheer curtains billowing softly in a breeze.
The use of the transparent panel to the left of the Ralph Lauren home page below conveys a silky, sophisticated restraint, echoed to a lesser extent in the subtle drop shadows on its subpages, perfect for a fashion house that sells to affluent women.
Elegant business websites that appeal to affluent women: examples
The websites below are among the best of the best in affluent web design. (In the interest of fairness, only the last website shown was designed by us; the rest were selected without regard to the company or web design team.)
Click on the links below each website shown to see a larger view. (Because websites change over time, we've elected to display larger screenshots rather than link to the live websites.) All screenshots were taken on a wide-screen monitor.
Vera Wang on Weddings: the wedding and website as art
{ View larger Vera Wang on Weddings home page }
In an era of bridal excess featuring baroque, bead-encrusted wedding gowns, Vera Wang's bridal fashion design set the standard for refined simplicity. Her Vera Wang on Weddings website builds on this tradition of excellent taste.
Understated and sublime, the home page delights visitors with unexpected imagery. (Other home page images at the time of this writing included a bride hiding her face behind a china dish plastered with real lipstick kisses, a ponytailed bride tossing silver spoons over her shoulder in lieu of a bouquet, and an elegantly sandaled woman standing on her toes to stack a white-wrapped gift atop two other gifts shown ten times to scale.)
Beyond the high-end photography, this website meets every standard of affluent web design: volumes of white space, simple navigation, elegantly delineated modules inviting visitors to create a bridal registry or shop a white sale, fine lines, a very spare color palette... and the visitor's eye always knows where to rush next.
{ View larger Vera Wang on Weddings webpage }
Unlike many websites, where design funds are lavished on the home page and little is left for the rest of the site, Wang's subpages carry on the theme. Though the images become more traditional, they're shot with a definite artist's eye and placed snazzily on the page.
I'On Group: style and luxury at your fingertips
{ View larger I'On Group home page }
The upscale neighborhoods developed by the I'On Group, the firm responsible for such nationally acclaimed neotraditional living communities as I'On in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and Mixson in North Charleston, SC, tend toward a European flavor and a close sense of community. Its website displays both aspects in a clean, simple design that's easy on the eyes and the affluent woman's stress level.
Aside from the gorgeous photography, the website meets the standards of affluent web design: ample white space, simple navigation where the viewer expects to find it, clearly delineated sections, very clean lines, and a spare color palette of white, subtle gray gradients, and a soft slate blue.
In a clever twist, the web designers chose to include the website's photos in a horizontally scrolling header generously sized enough to show off each photo; should the visitor desire to see more of the neighborhood in question, she has only to slide the scrollbar to the side. Our only quibble is that on the live site, some of the photos are so narrow as to lend a slight feeling of clutter to the website, which is otherwise expansive and airy.
{ View larger I'On Group webpage }
The subpages continue the theme; no matter which page she clicks on, the website visitor knows exactly what to expect and thus quickly feels at home.
Another aspect we like are the photos highlighting the human element. On the "participate" webpage, for instance, a variety of photos show real residents actively participating in neighborhood meetings and get-togethers. For women baby boomers, who tend to be more affluent than other age groups and whom we would guess make up a significant portion of I'On Group's target audience, photos of real women who look like themselves, rather than airbrushed models, are appreciated; appeals to nostalgia, as with the vintage tricycle shown above, are also likely to be a hit. (Find more tips on marketing to women baby boomers here.)
Another significant bonus can be found on the website's "approach" and "core values" webpages, which features the company's dedication to people, sustainable practices, and even art. Environmental and social responsibility are quite important to women consumers of all ages, and I'On Group sets itself apart by devoting a portion of its website to its efforts in these areas.
Tiffany & Co.: timeless perfection online and off
{ View larger Tiffany & Co home page }
Departing from the strict definition of white space, Tiffany & Co. has capitalized on its signature robin's egg blue while still giving the visitor visual room to breathe... if she can. (The product photography tends to take the breath away.)
The elements of affluent web design are all here: simple navigation above and below, clearly partitioned "ad" boxes inviting each visitor to discover why a Tiffany diamond is the best in the world or find her perfect engagement ring, simple lines, and a restrained color palette involving little more than the addition of blacks and grays to the signature blue.
Note the restraint in the use of the logo, too. We often receive requests from business owners to increase the size of their logo in a marketing piece or on a website, sometimes to an extreme extent. True power, though, does not exist in brute force; if you have to shout an order at the top of your lungs, you're not very powerful. The marketing prowess of Tiffany & Co. is unparalleled in the world of jewelry; that they choose not to "shout" with their logo is actually a bold statement, the equivalent of a monarch whispering, "Off with his head." (Oh, that head will still come off.)
{ View larger Tiffany & Co. webpage }
The subpages expand the navigation below the header, and more importantly, expand the selection of choices, all elegantly shot against a pure white backdrop.
Fresh: airy and light
{ View larger Fresh home page }
Another area where women are willing to trade up by spending more—sometimes much more—according to Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World's Largest, Fastest Growing Market, is skincare. A September 2010 survey of 1,000 women by the publisher of Consumer Reports, too, found 41% had purchased makeup in the past 30 days, up 4% from April... during a rough economic period when fewer women bought jeans and jewelry.
Fresh, a purveyor of skincare, makeup, and other beauty-related products that originally began with the creation of an artisanal soap, attempts to hit the sweet spot with these women with its shopping website... and succeeds admirably.
Combining the generous use of white space with the artistic use of images and typography lends an upscale air to Fresh's product lines on a website that must otherwise operate as a workhorse for its owners. True to the company's name and tagline, the website is fresh and feels good.
The website's subpages delineate the various product categories cleanly, and the invitation to buy comes quickly; no extra drilling down a product detail page is necessary. Click on any product category—cleanser, for instance—and your options are clear, from a selection of several products each displayed with an amply-sized photograph, quick description, and "add to bag" link. (Those wanting more information have only to click on the "learn more" link, where more details appear, along with another "add to bag" image link.) Chalk up one more affluent customer purchase!
Calistoga Ranch: a serenely simple hideaway
{ View larger Calistoga Ranch home page }
Too many of the hotel websites we've run across—even the four- and five-star variety—seem to be built on a template used by nearly everyone else in the industry. It goes something like this: logo, header links, huge gorgeous photo, and a clunky left column or content area beneath the photo containing a hapharzard crowd of form fields, calendar icons, arrows, links, and buttons, and at last a myriad of text links and sometimes a motley selection of non-hotel logos that don't match. If you can ignore the eyesore form section, at first the website still looks attractive... but take away the glossy photo, and it's downright ugly.
The Calistoga Ranch website is quite a refreshing change. There's nary a form field or calendar icon until you're ready to book and click on the reservations link in the header menu; visitors can also choose to call a toll free reservations number that's conveniently posted in the top right corner of every page. The navigation choices on each page are clear and the primary links are few in number.
The marketing team at Calistoga Ranch also clearly paid attention to two facts—that women make 70% of travel decisions and that affluent women tend to be busy—and the result is this well executed website. With it, the resort and spa offers the next best thing to a stay on its premises to its online visitors: an instant feeling of serenity, a deep breath of relief in the midst of an overscheduled, overstressed world.
Every website image was carefully chosen, from the golden sunlight shining through trees to the warm, welcoming glow of windows at twilight. Whenever a human being appears in a photograph on this website, she's either a woman alone or a woman shown with another: a wife enjoying morning coffee with her husband, a woman performing yoga, a woman dipping her toes into a bowl of flower-topped water. (Indeed, our only quibbles are that the number of people-less beauty shots outnumber those with a human face, and there could be more diversity in the women shown.) Clearly, this resort caters to women... though men will enjoy it too.
{ View larger Calistoga Ranch webpage }
The website design itself is serene as well: a cream-colored page floating above a white background, elegant typography, rich copy (text), just a touch reminiscent of a well-written letter on fine stationery.
J. W. Daigler: simplicity, elegance, and values that matter
{ View larger J. W. Daigler home page }
The use of female-centric values as a way to appeal to women consumers, paired with a fun yet sophisticated website design, secured a spot for J. W. Daigler Co., a purveyor of fine stationery, on our list. Among the other affluent web design touches, we love the fresh blue website background, the carefully selected graphics such as the hand drawn toddler's dress, and the cozy and even rustic background textures like the grosgrain ribbon, burlap, a fabric bullet board, wooden planks, and soft baby blanket used in the header slideshow. The menu options are intuitive and crystal clear and the call to action buttons are noticeable without being obtrusive.
The home page and many of the site's webpages carry messages about savoring and celebrating life, designed specifically to appeal to affluent women from mothers and grandmothers to brides, sisters, and girlfriends:
~ Celebrate timeless traditions (paired with a photo of siblings grouped on a beach)
~ Capture moments of joy (paired with a photo of a mischievous little boy)
~ Create elegant memories (paired with an unassuming photo of a bride)
~ Treasure a new beginning (paired with a photo of a newborn baby)
{ View larger J. W. Daigler webpage }
The "about us" webpage, while sadly without photos (a black-and-white photo, in keeping with other images on the website, of the sisters would be welcome here), charms with its story of the two sisters who founded the company, naming it after their first initials, and assures affluent women they're in excellent company with the offhand mention of a client roster that includes Estee Lauder, Clinique, and Revlon. Another nice touch? The credibility logo at the bottom of the page: C-O-M-O-D-O Secured. While the website visitor has no way to know what this really means, as the image does not serve as a link, it's still reassuring to online shoppers, who at least take away the feeling the company is serious about online security.
Ralph Lauren: fashion as art
{ View larger Ralph Lauren home page }
Another industry where women are willing to trade up by spending more, according to Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World's Largest, Fastest Growing Market, is clothing. Ralph Lauren appeals to those affluent women who prefer their fashion to sport a moneyed town-and-country feeling.
Visiting this website's home page feels more like a event or a fashion photo shoot than a common shopping visit; it's an experience that pays heed to Paco Underhill's description of the ideal woman-focused website as a pleasure, a daily ritual, or a place of escape.
{ View larger Ralph Lauren webpage }
While the subpages of the website don't quite live up to the home page's promise (a common plight), instead tending much more toward the utilitarian, the company's marketing team has done its best to elevate the page templates with large, dramatic images and spots of transparency, and the detail pages list information essential to the female online shopper: the inseam length is there, as is the ability to zoom in on an image, view alternate views of the item in question, and quickly find out whether the item is washable or dry clean only.
Cupcake: making your mouth water
{ View larger Cupcake home page }
You don't have to be an international powerhouse to do a fantastic job of marketing to affluent consumers online; well-to-do women consumers are just as open to local firms... and in some cases actively seek to support them, as encouraged by the burgeoning Buy Local movement.
Case in point: Cupcake, with locations currently only in the sunny state of South Carolina, enjoys more than 10,000 fans on its Facebook page, many of them remarkably dedicated to the bakery's scrumptious wares. An autumn 2010 "What's your favorite cupcake?" promotion, which played a part in integrating the company's website and social media efforts, turned up hundreds of enthusiastic votes for every one of Cupcake's dozens of flavors; many of the votes were accompanied by comments and multiple exclamation marks. (The firm's bestselling cupcake? Red velvet.)
The website makes the most of the firm's signature cupcakes, shown in various stages of baking and enjoyment, along with the modern flair of Cupcake founder Kristin Kuhlke.
(Marketing pros might recognize a modified "Z" eye flow in this website design. One of the most classic forms in advertising, the Z eye flow is effortless on the part of American viewers: in our culture, we're trained to read from left to right, beginning at the top of the page. All else being equal, the American eye will naturally fall on the upper left portion of a page, read to the right, and return to the left, at a slight diagonal, for the next line. Smart advertisers take advantage of this natural "eye flow"; in Cupcake's case, the eye falls on the webpage's large photo, scanning it from left to right, and then is drawn diagonally down to the featured cupcake box, flows naturally to the right where it encounters the start of a line of text and from there flows naturally down through the text.)
{ View larger Cupcake webpage }
A nice touch: as part of the "What's your favorite cupcake?" promotion, the favorite flavors of Cupcake's real customers appear on each webpage; new customer votes are rotated in regularly. (Customer permission is obtained first, naturally.) And visitors to the firm's "request a donation" webpage find that the company regularly supports a host of nonprofits. Any nonprofit can request a free donation of cupcakes using a simple online form, and Cupcake's staff does its best to fulfill as many requests as possible; a plus not only for the nonprofits but for the many women consumers who prize social responsibility.
The website was featured by South Carolina ETV Radio as its "Website of the Week" in November 2010, and founder Kristin Kuhlke was interviewed on NPR.
A partner in marketing to affluent women
Marketing to mass affluent women is exactly our specialty. If you've been wanting to focus more on affluent women as one of your primary target markets, we're here to help! We take the latest research on women's buying habits and thinking patterns, and utilize it to strategically design websites and other marketing for companies selling to women consumers. (Want to see some of our work? Visit our design portfolio.) We're only a phone call or email away.
Want to know more about marketing to affluent women? Visit our companion website MarketingtoAffluentWomen.com, which launched March 30, 2011... it's solely about marketing to affluent women, selling to affluent women, positioning your brand to appeal to affluent women customers, and reaching affluent women buyers online.
