Sex!

Well, now that I have your attention I wanted to turn you on (sorry) to some very interesting designers. Faced with a 24 hour turnaround flight I picked up some magazines at the airport. An old favorite is Fast Company. I hadn't read it for a while, but the cover featured 'Masters of Design' so I was intrigued. In the interest of brevity I will just tell you it had several "aha" moments. But the one I will tell you about today is the article about the Femme Den. It is a group of four designers at Smart Design. By now everyone knows that the overwhelming majority of buying decisions (and much, much more of course) are made by women.

In the garden center industry women easily make up around 75% of the customer base. So why is it so hard to get the message right? Well in many cases it is because many advertising and marketing decisions are made by 50+ year old men. So it is a classic case of men are from mars, women are from venus. I was trying to explain this principle to a client the other day. In the course of our 3 hour conversation (mostly me talking, but that's why they pay me the big bucks) there were several moments of, "I just don't get it."

I explained that women are interested in relationships and faced with the choice between an ad loaded with type and prices, they will actually respond more positively to something a bit more aesthetically pleasing. In other words the cluttered newsprint ad you've been sending out for years was (is) terrible. Thankfully customers are so drawn to the product that they overlook the marketing. So I got another variation on "I just don't..." - which I met with a stiff "It doesn't matter what you think, it only matters what they think!"

So with proper credit to the Femme Den here are their top five tips for designing for women:

1) Emphasize Benefits over Features: Rather than concentrating on the specs, concentrate more on making the products benefits clear. Who can it connect her to? How does it make her life easier? How will it save her time? (I would add that you speak in terms of relaxation, creativity, collaboration, etc.)
2) Learn Her Body: (Remember, these are their tips) Women have different bone and muscle structure (did I mention they design products). Simply shrinking products leads to injury and frustration. (They call it the 'Shrink it and Pink it' process that most manufacturers go through).
3) Craft a Cohesive Story: Women consider more than just the product itself. Design the whole experience with them in mind, from advertising and packaging to the retail environment and customer service. (Read this one again, and then look at your entire presentation. Remember 'Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing')
4) Identify a Spot on the Spectrum: For some tasks, women want to feel girly: for others, not at all. Nix the hyper-feminized stereotype and consider where on the spectrum this product should land.
5) Remember Her Life Stages: Are you designing for a 25-year-old or a 65-year-old.

Kind of interesting huh? Did I mention that the Femme Den work in the design of products? Don't get hung up on the product points, but rather think in terms of your whole retail business as the product.