At a web writing seminar held at one of London's copywriting
agencies, our trainer remarked that writing content that is aimed at
teenagers is particularly challenging as the dangers are either sounding
patronizing or using the current slang terms and coming across like a
dad dancing at the school disco.
Teenagers make up a large percentage of web users and research has shown that 29% of them research various consumer products before purchasing them. When it comes to designing e-commerce sites that attract a teen audience and writing content, it is important to think about how this particular target group uses the web, as usability guru Jakob Nielsen states, 'Technology is so integrated with teenagers' lives that creating useful and usable websites for them is more critical than ever.
Teenagers surf the web with various tasks in mind, this can include research for a school project, visiting social media sites or shopping online. In his study on teenage usability, Nielsen identifies differences in the way in which this particular age group uses the web as opposed to adults. Some of his findings include the fact that they are far less patient than adults, dislike search and are put off by chunky pieces of text.
These results are extremely important particularly for e-commerce sites whose target market are teenagers. Web owners often only think of the adult site visitors, yet its the younger age group who are looking at the product descriptions and deciding what to buy. The adults get involved usually when it's time to fill in the credit card details.
Research has shown that teenagers spend as much time on on e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com and e-bay as do adults. If we look at amazon.com we can easily see how the design and content makes it user friendly for this particular age group. Amazon has a very good navigation system, and offers it's site visitors the opportunity to search in various departments or just by typing in the keyword/s which offers a range of related items.
Being able to find the products they are looking for with the minimum amount of effort is a key issue with teenage users as they have 'less sophisticated research strategies' (Nielsen) and lower levels of patience. The product descriptions on amazon.com are short and easy to understand followed by customer ratings and reviews which are presented as snippets that can be read at a glance.
If we compare amazon.com to another e-commerce site such as kickers.com, we can see how the latter would not rate so well with the younger audience. Firstly, the site is built using Flash which makes it slow to load, and getting to the products takes a bit of time as the images and category names are not clickable.
Bearing in mind that internet users, and especially teenagers are impatient on the web, we can safely assume they would find it frustrating trying to figure out what and where to click on this site. Also there are no product descriptions which would provide the necessary 'nudge' that would lead to conversion.
For any web site, be it e-commerce or educational, it really pays off to create a set of 'user peronas', each representing a member of the target audience. Teenagers spend a lot of time online and are an important target group, even though they will not be the ones making the purchases online, they will be looking at the products before going to the store or asking an adult to complete the purchasing process for them.
Writing content that is relevant to their interests and that accommodates their online habits will greatly increase the site's success with this particular age group.
Teenagers make up a large percentage of web users and research has shown that 29% of them research various consumer products before purchasing them. When it comes to designing e-commerce sites that attract a teen audience and writing content, it is important to think about how this particular target group uses the web, as usability guru Jakob Nielsen states, 'Technology is so integrated with teenagers' lives that creating useful and usable websites for them is more critical than ever.
Teenagers surf the web with various tasks in mind, this can include research for a school project, visiting social media sites or shopping online. In his study on teenage usability, Nielsen identifies differences in the way in which this particular age group uses the web as opposed to adults. Some of his findings include the fact that they are far less patient than adults, dislike search and are put off by chunky pieces of text.
These results are extremely important particularly for e-commerce sites whose target market are teenagers. Web owners often only think of the adult site visitors, yet its the younger age group who are looking at the product descriptions and deciding what to buy. The adults get involved usually when it's time to fill in the credit card details.
Research has shown that teenagers spend as much time on on e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com and e-bay as do adults. If we look at amazon.com we can easily see how the design and content makes it user friendly for this particular age group. Amazon has a very good navigation system, and offers it's site visitors the opportunity to search in various departments or just by typing in the keyword/s which offers a range of related items.
Being able to find the products they are looking for with the minimum amount of effort is a key issue with teenage users as they have 'less sophisticated research strategies' (Nielsen) and lower levels of patience. The product descriptions on amazon.com are short and easy to understand followed by customer ratings and reviews which are presented as snippets that can be read at a glance.
If we compare amazon.com to another e-commerce site such as kickers.com, we can see how the latter would not rate so well with the younger audience. Firstly, the site is built using Flash which makes it slow to load, and getting to the products takes a bit of time as the images and category names are not clickable.
Bearing in mind that internet users, and especially teenagers are impatient on the web, we can safely assume they would find it frustrating trying to figure out what and where to click on this site. Also there are no product descriptions which would provide the necessary 'nudge' that would lead to conversion.
For any web site, be it e-commerce or educational, it really pays off to create a set of 'user peronas', each representing a member of the target audience. Teenagers spend a lot of time online and are an important target group, even though they will not be the ones making the purchases online, they will be looking at the products before going to the store or asking an adult to complete the purchasing process for them.
Writing content that is relevant to their interests and that accommodates their online habits will greatly increase the site's success with this particular age group.
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