Business can click with silver surfers

Figures on wealth, ownership and consumerism for the over 50s suggest that getting these folks online should be a commercial imperative, writes JOHN HOLDEN

IT IS ESTIMATED that approximately 70 per cent of Europe’s wealth is in the hands of the over 50s. In the last 20 years, consumption within that age bracket has risen three times as fast as the rest of the population. By the same token, the latest research carried out in Ireland showed that only 25 percent of over 50s in Ireland have IT skills.

Yet there is no massive push on the part of advertisers and marketers to get older people online. Surely with the massive growth of online advertising and by extension online shopping, one would assume more of that “old money” would be aimed at?

The last in-depth research conducted in 2008 – commissioned by the Work Research Centre and Age Action Ireland – indicated that 25 per cent of people over 50 are online but only 35 per cent of them were engaged in functional usage. In other words, they had internet access in their houses but they weren’t getting a whole lot of benefit from it.

“This study is old so we’re also trying to stimulate better more up to date research in the area,” says Sinead Gibney, head of social action at Google Ireland and co-architect of Google’s Age Engage programme, which aims to build scalable and sustainable models for IT skills in older people.

Perception of older people within society as a whole is the first problem in tapping into this market. “It is presumed everybody in society is now online,” says Eamon Timmins of Age Action Ireland.

“This is not the case. Many older people are yet to overcome the psychological barrier of starting to learn how to use a computer and yet it is this community which could benefit most from being online.”

Fifty-plus is a pretty wide age group to be working from and there are misconceptions on the flipside too. “The available research starts at age 50, which obviously is an incredibly diverse group in society,” says Gibney. “Many 50-plus people are considered to be dependent. But the figures say otherwise. Only five per cent of people in Ireland over 50 are in residential care.”

Whether older people are online or not, they are very often ignored by marketers who continue to reinforce stereotypes of young, hip people using their products or services.

“There is an interesting anomaly in the motor marketing industry,” says Gibney. “The vast majority of small cars are bought by older people. Yet have you ever seen an older person in a small car ad ?”

The over 50s are one of the few demographics in society with money and yet advertisers fail to address them. “It’s not that marketers are age friendly,” says Gibney. “They’re not even age neutral.”

Timmins believes the marketing industry is getting wise to this though. “There is huge potential commercially in this community,” he says.

“There is an awareness and I think companies realise young people don’t have the money to buy computers while older people can afford to buy one.”

An example of this was the recent Nintendo Wii TV campaign which featured actors such as Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart playing educational video games. “There are currently a lot of older people signing up to Facebook in the US,” says Timmons.

Even the commercial opportunities of IT training among older people don’t seem to be tapped into. “The opportunity for social enterprise models within skills development itself is the most obvious one,” says Gibney. “There is a need for IT skills training in older people and there would be lots of business opportunities there.”

Once an older user is online, however, the ease at which sites can be surfed is, according to Gibney, rarely taken into consideration by web designers.

“It’s amazing how little thought is put into this age group,” she says. “The characterisation of a new computer user is someone young and yet lots of new users are older people.

“When we go online, the ‘submit’ or ‘purchase’ or ‘cancel’ buttons, at the bottom of a page, will more than likely pop out to us. That’s not the case for older people. They tend to read from left to right every single word on the screen,” she says.

”They don’t make that leap to hit the right button immediately. So user design needs to respond to older users.

“But this will happen once we address the skills deficit and then we’ll see pressure from that age group to make online businesses improve their services. They are a group of consumers who we want online. They will improve the internet.

“Older web users are the most savvy of consumers. They’re not loyal, they’ll shop around because they have the time to do it, and they’ll have no problem complaining if they don’t get the product or service they expected.”

For more information on Google's Age Engage Programme, see getyourfolksonline.ie

Age Action’s ‘Getting Started’ programme offers training, tel: 01-475 6989