How does your gender and age influence your search behaviour – A Christmas case study!

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Paul Carysforth

I’ve always found it perplexing how little research has been conducted into how age or gender impacts search behaviour. It surprises me how little Google,  search or digital agencies have explored this area and in particular whether age / gender influences which results a person clicks on.  Even more interesting in my opinion is how different types of content influence that person to click. There seems to be a common belief that your position on the page is pretty much the sole determinator and that people flock to the highest listing.

For this reason I decided to conduct my own research to find out:

a) Does the standard clickthrough by position hold true

b) Does age or gender influence this
c) What are the influencing factors that make a person click on one result from another?
d) Again does this differ based on your age or gender

To go about this I found a keyword that did not have any particular demographic bias – so ‘Christmas gifts’. This ensured that the response I was looking to get would be relatively natural, as all audiences would likely find a listing that was relevant. It also has a decent volume of search – 40,500 UK exact matches searches and was nice and topical.

The next step was to screengrab the results page (not logged in):

I then used TolunaQuick to send out the survey to 200 UK users, which I split as follows:

• 50% Female / 50% Male
• 33% 18-34 / 34% 35-54 / 33% 55+

To keep it nice and succinct I asked them to perform 2 short tasks:
1) You are looking for Christmas gifts and have conducted a search on Google for ‘Christmas Gifts’. Select one listing you would be most inclined to click on.

2) Specify how much each statement influenced your decision to choose that listing (from not important at all through to very important):
• It was the first listing I saw
• I had heard of the brand
• I am an existing customer
• There was an offer / promotion in the ad
• The headline of the ad grabbed my attention
• The additional links within the listing
• The URL itself
• The seller review stars
• It was near the top of the listings
• Free delivery message
• It was not an ad
• It was an ad

The results came in and they were very interesting…

1. Clickthrough by demographic

Findings split by gender.

Key findings:

• Organic position 1 did get the highest potential clickthrough with 33% of the clicks, although men were slightly more likely than woman to click
• Brand did influence both men and women, with women clicking disproportionally on House of Fraser and Men on John Lewis
• Very few people clicked on the Wowcher even though it was the top PPC listing

I then analysed the same report by age…

Key findings:

• The younger audience appear to be more impulsive, clicking on the top organic listing,whereas the older audiences were less influenced by rank
• The 18-34 age group were far more inclined to click on the web only brands e.g. I Want One of Those, Find Me a Gift, Buy A Gift
• The older audiences seemed to focus on the well known high street brands such as John Lewis, Thorntons, Boots as well as Not on the High Street
• Again Wowcher was not liked by any demographic

2. Influence Factors by Demographic

As noted earlier, I asked the 200 users 12 statements to define how influential they had been on their selection process.  Here are the results…

The results are ordered based on the statements that were considered very important.

Key findings:
• No great surprise – free delivery is decisive in retail!
• Offer promotions are key
• Interestingly brand awareness was the third most important and also being an existing customer (fifth)
• Seller stars i.e. social validation did have an influence perhaps more than some would have an expected
• The headline although important was not quite as influential

Male Responses

Female Responses

Key findings:

• An offer or promotion is slightly more important to men than woman – 24% vs 20%
• Brand awareness seemed to be far more important to women – 24% vs men – 15%. Although conversely being an existing customer was more important for men than woman, 16% vs 10%.
• Seller review stars and free delivery are important to both sexes equally, showing that there almost pre-requisites for any search campaign.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ve found this research interesting. I have more results if you are interested to find out more.. For me, what it doesn’t show is that for searches relevant for multiple audiences, it is critical to consider which terms are key to you and your brand and optimise your campaign accordingly. In addition, your brand does have a role to play – you need to invest in broader digital activity including display to maximise your chance in search and don’t just fixate on your rank!

Please feel free to let me know your thoughts!