Brands the Web and the 50+

Does your Web site convey your brand values as well to a 20 as a 60 year old? If not, why not? ;

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Ensuring a company’s Web site supports and enhances its brand is difficult. TV, radio and print puts the control of the channel in the hands of the brand manager. Not so with the Web. A Web site that works to perfection in the designer’s office can be a disaster when viewed by a novice Web user over a slow internet connection using a firewall and old version of Web browser. Fortunately, good Web designers understand how to solve these technical challenges.

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What is rarer for designers to understand is how to create Web sites that work equally well for all ages of user. In the main web sites are built by the young for the young, taking no account of older people’s requirements. This is not a problem if the brand is exclusively aimed at young people but it becomes a serious issue if the Web site attracts all ages of visitors.

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Older Internet users

The number of older people using the Internet varies widely by country. In the US nearly 70% of 55-64 year olds are users whilst in Spain only 11% are connected. Penetration rates in the UK, Germany are somewhere between these two extremes. Like so much market analysis this data ignores people aged 65 and older. This is slightly better than the latest Internet research from the European Union that assumes life stops at 55 years!

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Past the age of 65 there is a significant fall-off in Internet use. In the US approximately 25% of the over-65s are connected. In the UK only 15% of the over-65s use the Internet. ; Members of this age group left the workplace before the Internet became widely adopted which is the main reason for such low levels of use.

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Once people are connected to the Internet their age becomes less of a factor in determining their level of use. For instance, in the US, Japan and the UK the percentage of each age group shopping online varies by less than 10 percentage points. See Figure 2. The same pattern occurs for the number of hours per month that people spend online. In the UK, the time spent online per month, between the ages of 45-64 differs by less than 20%.

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The obvious message from this analysis is that in some countries, people over the age of 50 years are a significant proportion of the Internet population and online shoppers. This simple analysis by age does not reveal that the over-50s Internet users are the wealthiest and best educated of their age cohort. For a lot of brands they are a prime target audience.

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Age DOES make a difference

It is bizarre that marketers pay scant attention to the things that are known to be different between young and older people yet are obsessed with the differences that probably don’t to exist.

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Aging results in a decline in short-term memory, failing eyesight and problems with precision movement. All of these conditions affect how people use the Web. ; In addition to these physical factors are the age related design issues of the site’s style of language, type of content and choice of the iconography.

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The US Financial Services industry found that web users over 55 took 40% longer and made 20% more errors than their juniors. Research by Nielsen Norman, the web usability consultants, found that web users over the age of 65 took 66% more time completing tasks than those aged 21-55. These results are not due to younger peoples’ greater experience and increased frequency of using the web. They are a result of getting older.

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What goes wrong?

The prime requirement on visiting a web site is that it simple to use and delivers what is required in as fast and painless way as possible. Fail to meet this requirement and you are in trouble. Our research shows that for people aged over-50, the majority of Web sites fail to satisfy this basic requirement.

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These are the most common reasons for the problems:

Page Creep – The world’s most popular and easiest to use Web site is

Google. Its home page contains 37 words. Over the past couple of years it has added just 5 words. Most companies do not share Google’s obsession with retaining the structure and simplicity of their Web sites. ; As Web pages expand and lose their structure they become harder to use. An example of this can be seen on the SAGA Web site. The home page for the holiday section is a jumble of colours, images and navigation, containing over 60 navigational links. The insurance company esure is an excellent example of a simple and uncluttered Web site, designed around the user that supports the company’s brand values.

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Confusing animation – The presences of moving images makes it difficult for older people to concentrate and make decisions as they navigate a Web site. This is not an opinion but a fact. It is astonishing that so many companies litter their Web sites with animated graphics that does nothing but confuse. ; Princess Cruise’s Web site is a good example of this problem. A quarter of the site’s home page is covered with an animated image. As the Web site user attempts to make a decision about their cruise they are continually distracted by a series of flashing images. ; Animated advertising causes the same problems.

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Poor navigation – Many research studies show that older people find “goal centred” navigation the easiest to use. This type of navigation is structured around the ‘goals’ that people have when they visit a site. The UK Government’s Job Centre site is an excellent of this type of navigation.

“Dynamic Menus” are the worst type of navigation for older people. ; With this navigation, new sub menu appears as the cursor is moved over a menu item. This can be difficult to understand and hard to use for people with dexterity problems. ; Surprisingly, the American Marketing Association uses this type navigation. ;

Design elements – When building a Web site that will work well with older people there is a long list of dos and don’ts about colours, colour combinations, fonts, font sizes and image sizes. Often designers don’t know or ignore this information.

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The same usability consultants who researched the over-50s has recently studied how teenagers use the Web. ; Contrary to popular opinion they found them less Web-literate than their parents. Web sites that teenagers rated the highest were relatively modest and of clean design. They typically marked down overly glitzy sites as too difficult to use. Teenagers like to do ‘stuff’ on the Web, and dislike sites that are slow or that look fancy but behave clumsily. It seems that Web site design is one area where teenagers and their parents agree!

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What to do about it

The first step is to take serious the issue of making the Web channel age neutral. Unless the subject gets on to the marketing agenda it will never be addressed. A way of testing how well a company understands this issue is to answer these simple questions:

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Of the people using the web site how many are 50+?

Is the Web site’s copy and iconography age neutral?

Does the site’s menu and navigation structure take account of best practice rules for older users?

Is the use animation likely to delight or annoy the older person?

Has the site been tested with an audience of older people?

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Most companies find it difficult if not impossible to answer these questions.

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If you accept the arguments about the economic importance of older consumers then optimising your Web site for their needs should be an obvious business decision.

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www.20plus30.com