As you may or may not have noticed, I am a bit of a nerd, and also female. (Also mentioned in my previous post) This means I have an interest for all sorts of gadgets and computer stuff and phones, and so on, plus I like them to be pretty!

At a request from a friend who had a part time job in an electronics shop, I once specified the market segment for pink gadgets like the Qtek 8500 Pink phone to “Girls who are interested in gadgets, but at the same time wish to make it abundantly clear that they are in fact, Girls. They care about the look of the product, they use the more complicated business functions to their fullest ability, have an opinion or two on how to make advanced functions suit their individual purposes, but (and this is important:) they are not nerdy enough to completely distance themselves from Microsoft and its quest to conquer the entire world of technology”. We’re not a really large market segment, but we seem to be expanding.

Apparently the new Ladies’ Corner at the Norwegian webshop ps.no is directed at girls like me.

However I get a sort of bad taste in my mouth when they specify why they wanted this special section in their shop. This is because they get a fair amount of complaints from customers that their product specs are too difficult to understand. Instead of focusing on improving their own ability to present their products, they choose to add “explanations for blondes” to a few of their pinker items, group them with some jewellery and makeup, and call it “a special webshop for girls and women of all ages”. To top it off, most of their “explanations” are so basic and in such bad language that they’re more confusing than helpful…

I would have much preferred them to do like my favorite webshop; add product specifications in an easy-to-compare format, and then type a few words of general information about each product and product group. That way they could have solved the original problem without supporting the time-old assumptions that girls are just not as smart as guys.