When it comes to shopping online, teenage users are a contradiction: Most teens don't have their own credit card, yet they love to shop online. (Which simply proves they have access to their parents' card).
About 80 percent of online teens age 12-17 visit retail sites, according to ComScore. This represents an audience of between 12 to 15 million teen shoppers. For example, eBay saw 6.4 million teen users in April 2006, while Amazon saw 3.5 million and Apple saw 3 million. (In Apple's case, iTunes was surely the draw.)
Another paradox about teens online, or perhaps it's best described as a myth: Teens are not the super tech-savvy users they are popularly thought to be.
According to popular conception, teens are far more adept at Internet use than adult users. We have an image of the totally plugged-in teen, instant messaging while cruising MySpace, downloading movies while listening to their iPod.
But being constantly plugged doesn't mean teens are tech wizards, claims a study by the Nielsen Norman Group. While some teens are tech know-it-alls, they're the exception, says Hoa Loranger, one of the report's authors.
To be sure, teens are much more comfortable with technology — they don't fear it as much as adults do.
But if something doesn't work for a teen user, "they have much less patience, and that's why they can't overcome a lot of technological obstacles. If it doesn't work the way they expect, they just abandon the process."
Furthermore, teens' research and reading skills haven't yet matured, she notes.
Due to these factors, teens successfully complete online tasks less often (55 percent success rate) than adult users (66 percent success rate), based on the Nielsen study.
Yet, however difficult it may be to reach these fickle consumers, they represent a potentially lucrative market. A Pew study in late 2004 estimated the total online teen audience, age 12-17, as 21 million. This first generation of users to have grown from infancy in the Internet age will surely be active online consumers in the years ahead.
Balancing Hipness with Ease of Use
The Nielsen study watched teens in action. So it's based on actual teen behavior as opposed to surveys that teen users filled out about themselves.
As researchers tracked teen Web usage, they discovered a conundrum: Teenagers are attracted to sites with a hip, cutting-edge look, yet they have difficulty with a complex design.
"The visual feel and visual design is very important to them. First impressions are very important," Loranger says. "They like cool graphics and they pay attention to the visual experience more than adults do."
Teen users also need to be constantly engaged and entertained to keep their attention. "The common thing we heard over and over again is 'I'm bored,'" she says.
But ultimately, they want to get something done. They're not like young children, who randomly scrub the screen with the mouse to see what pops up. Teens are more task specific.
"So when the visual design or the interaction design gets in the way of what they're trying to accomplish, then that really degrades the user experience for teens."
Hip is good, but overly busy or complex is bad. "If the site is shouting for their attention and everything is dynamic and moving, it's a big turn-off for teens," says Loranger.
So the primary Web design challenge for teens is to give a very easy-to-use design a very contemporary look. "While a cool visual design is important, you need to balance it with simple interaction because they won't spend the time to figure it out," she says.
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