Man-cave marketing: catering your E-commerce store for male shoppers

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If your e-commerce store offers items more suited to men, it’s useful to go to a brick and mortar store to observe the way men shop as opposed to women. One of the first things you’ll notice is women browse, while men tend to go directly to what they came to buy. If you’re man-cave marketing, that is, catering your e-commerce store for male shoppers, one of the first things to do is place your most popular items on your home page so guys can find them right away. Don’t count on male shoppers to go digging around in your site to find what they’re looking for.

Additionally, men tend to purchase when a need is immediate and stop shopping once they’ve found the item meeting their need. With that said, they do also like to research products before buying them. Therefore, successful male-oriented sites make items easy to find, offer useful background information and provide comparison opportunities to help guys feel they’ve made decisions based upon tangible evidence.

Along similar lines, product information should be presented in a straightforward fashion. Men want to take it in, digest it, apply it to their need and proceed. Fanciful language runs counter to this style of shopping. Men like spacious layouts.

Men are also more likely to use a mobile device when they shop online and have fewer reservations about paying with mobile devices. For this reason, your male-oriented platform should be extremely mobile friendly. If you’re setting up a free ecommerce store, make sure the platform is optimized for mobile shopping and payments.

While all shoppers are price-conscious, men tend to think in terms of getting a great value for their money, as opposed to getting a really good deal on a product. In other words, while women can usually be motivated by sale prices, you’ll need to focus more on value to inspire men to buy.

When you’re designing a male-oriented site, use straight lines, sharp edges, and straightforward fonts with minimal flourishes. Remember, most men like to get straight to their purchases. Frilly designs alienate guys.

Now, with that said, presenting male shoppers with legitimately related items at checkout is a good play, particularly if they were about to continue shopping for an item to complement their purchase. An interesting aspect of most male-oriented hobbies is the more they get, the more they need. For example, if they’re into cycling and they just bought a helmet, it doesn’t hurt to show them the latest shoes too. Plus, offering package pricing on related items makes guys feel like they got a better value.

As for color schemes, in general, men like blue, green, red and black. Black conveys strength, luxury and exclusivity—particularly when it’s paired with gold. Red implies urgency, so use it for sale prices and call-to-action buttons. Blue and green are easy on the eyes and restful. Men tend to shop longer where these colors are prevalent. Black and white designs play well for men because they feel edgy. By the way, roughly eight percent of men are color-blind.

Guys also want to belong. Make every effort to learn all you can about your male customers so you can talk to them in language specific to their self-images. Relate your products to things in which you know men are interested and show them how using the products can make them better at what they enjoy doing. Such man-cave marketing efforts, catering your e-commerce store for male shoppers, will absolutely improve your conversion rates among men.