Is this your vision of Seniors online? It’s certainly the prevailing
mindset in the interactive industry. We are so focused on the youth
market, and so averse to marketing to anyone over 55, you’d think we
were all Army recruiters.
Several recent client engagements reminded me that Seniors are a vital and underserved Internet audience. A little research showed me that the Seniors segment (defined as those 65 and older) is growing faster than other audience online – including children and teens. I got so excited that I wrote an article about reaching Seniors online, which you can read at Adotas.
[Photo credit: Rachel Pennington]
Misha Cornes
Comments
Connections
I don’t see how the image above embodies the misperception you are implying it does. This gentleman seems to know what he’s doing: his computer is pretty up to date, his monitor shows a pretty high resolution and some pretty fancy applications running, and the machine itself is installed close to his bed where he can access it often.
A more common misperception is, I think, that seniors aren’t online at all, and if they are they are it’s only in some kind of basic training class at a senior center, or being assisted by their children and/or grandchildren. The reality is as you say: that they’re already online in massive and growing numbers, and yet web designers and strategists don’t take their unique needs into consideration nearly enough. That’s the real hurdle web designers need to get over.
You’re totally right, Christian. Sometimes I get a little over-enamored of a picture I find on flickr, and I can’t let go! I think what I was trying to capture is that this man seems really old- he is 89- definitely a senior, but that older boomers are also “seniors”, and that they’re a lot a more with-it than people give them credit for, and therefore underserved.
I got some interesting feedback on this article from an old professor of mine whose husband fits the category. He used computers throughout his professional life, but went cold turkey when he retired: “email interrupts your chain of thought and made you way too accessible to colleagues, students, and the world at large. I shouldn’t have been surprised at the fact that someone who never answered the phone at home wouldn’t want to have e-mail! Young people today are often addicted to digital connection, but it may be that the baby boomer generation now starting to think about retirement will have, at least temporarily, [his] feeling–that e-mail is the digital face of the demands of the workplace, and will have some mixed feelings about it emotionally.”
Here’s an awesome case of an incredibly global and active senior embracing the Blogosphere … Bill Marriott has started a blog and he totally gets it. Here’s a quote from his blog:
“Bottom line, I believe in communicating with the customer, and the internet gives me a whole new way of doing that on a global scale. I’d rather engage directly in dialogue with you because that’s how we learn and grow as a company.”
http://www.blogs.marriott.com/