Give Your Site Kid Appeal

The red dress with white polka dots and bloomers that Kimberly Majors saw

on-line didn’t excite her. But Majors, a US Marine Corps master sergeant from

Jacksonville, North Carolina, wasn’t buying for herself. She was shopping for

daughters Gabrielle, 2, and Janel, 4. And the girls loved what they saw.

"Ooh" they shouted as they pointed to the dress on Gapkids.com.

"We want that." So she dropped two of the $30 outfits into her virtual

shopping cart.

Make no mistake, kids dig cybershopping. Sure, young children–from toddlers

to preteens–aren’t always proficient readers. And few, if any, have credit

cards for on-line purchases. Yet they have clout. Some 84% of Netizens say they

enjoy going on-line with their children, according to researcher Cyber Dialogue.

And many of those are "Web-wise Moms." Cyberstores, take note: These

moms average 18 hours a week on-line and $62,500 in income, 27% higher than the

typical Net consumer.

Influential

Some parents even let the kids do the driving. A study by researcher NFO

WorldGroup found that three-fourths of parents who plan to shop on-line for

their kids this fall will let the children participate: Nearly half allow kids

to point and click their way across the Web, and 42% say their children suggest

sites they should visit. "Kids play a huge role in what their parents are

getting on-line," says Zain Raj, president of FCBi, the interactive

marketing arm of ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding.

Yet many e-tailers aren’t taking full advantage of that. Strangely, most

neglect to incorporate basic features that attract kids: games, animation,

flashy graphics, sound. Consider Guess. It’s a popular clothing brand among

kids, yet its website offers little that speaks to them. Guess.com is "all

static content," says senior analyst Melissa Grimes of Cyber Dialogue.

"There’s nothing to engage children." Guess declined to comment. But

it and other e-tailers might follow the lead of cereal makers: They decorate

products with cartoons to attract kids in the shopping cart as parents cruise

grocery aisles. The cyber-aisle is no different.

Some children’s sites get it. Even though adults do the buying, Disney.com

is a toddler’s dream–filled with images of Mickey and other Disney

characters and sounds of a xylophone. "Move the mouse, move the

mouse," demand Majors’ daughters, who like to visit the site several

times a week. Disney’s formula has made it the top kids’ site on the Net,

with 6.2 million unique visitors in August–five times the traffic of Nick

Jr.com, its closest competitor. "We’ve created something special and

unique: The integration of commerce for adults and entertainment for kids,"

says Kenneth Goldstein, managing director for Disney Online.

Wish list

This doesn’t necessarily mean that every family-oriented e-tailer should

remake itself into a noisy kids’ site. For merchants selling children’s

products, though, a dab of color and creativity can certainly boost traffic.

Target.com revamped its site this summer to appeal to the young. It features

gyrating orange circles and disappearing squares to capture kids’ attention. A

"wish list" that lets children identify gifts they want and e-mail the

items to parents has been added to boost sales during the upcoming holiday

season. More than 100,000 users have signed up since the feature was launched in

August, says Catherine David, general manager of Target.com.

With the holiday season around the corner, this may be a good time to inject

a little kid-appeal into your site.

By Roger O Crockett

in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2001 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc