Lessons in Online Marketing to Busy Moms

MarketingSherpa released a case study today about how Gymboree revised their website to better meet the needs of busy moms shopping for children's clothing online.  Some interesting lessons in here for any campaign targeting moms, including:

• Moms are multi-tasking at certain times of the day - "moms are so busy that they're hopping online as they're getting breakfast for the kids (the site shows a major spike in traffic at that time), during the early afternoon when kids are eating lunch/napping (another spike), or after bedtime."
• Don't ask too much, but do ask - Gymboree used a single question popup on their site asking "What one thing would you change on our Web site?" - sacrificing data collection for responses ... and they got them.
• Popups do work (gasp!) - When [the Gymboree] team realized that Google wasn't allowing ads linking to the home page due to the pop, they changed the offer to a banner-style ad on the site. "We definitely got more response when it was a popup," she said. "It didn't bother people because it was just one question."
• Make the user experience faster - Probably a no-brainer, but they did pay attention to the tasks that were taking moms the longest (entering sizes, finding pieces to match outfits, etc.) and then made these easier.  Lesson: it's not just the shopping cart that you need to make easy to use.
• Listen to moms and let them contribute - Having an easy to find feedback link on each page titled "Gymboree Listens" has had a great effect on helping them to build a dialogue and community with their users.  It's the same principle iVillage, BabyCenter, and AllRecipes have built their sites on ...

The article is available for open access at MarketingSherpa until June 10th - https://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2998