Men at eBay and Other Net Stats

Here are some juicy tidbits from an article in Internet Retailer that got my attention recently:

Among the interesting demographic data that Nielsen/NetRatings reports for the Top 10 sites are:

Travel sites do well with consumers 55 and older.

• 31% of Orbitz's traffic falls in that age group, as does 30% of Expedia's and almost 29% of Travelocity's.
• Dell does well with the older crowd also, with 34.5% of traffic 55 and older.
• Wal-Mart and Target are least popular with the older set, with just over 17% of traffic to those sites in that age group.
• 55+ traffic at the remaining sites are: 22% at eBay, 25% at Amazon, 27% at Yahoo Shopping, and 29% at Overstock.com.
  

Among the Top 10 shopping and travel sites, women dominate.

• Women are more than half the traffic at eight sites: 71.57% at Target, 62.46% at Expedia, 62.33% at Travelocity, 60.58% at WalMart.com, 56.48% at Overstock.com, 55.51% at Orbitz, 55.25% at Amazon and 53.19% at Yahoo Shopping.
• Men are 51.59% of traffic at Dell and 51.31% at eBay.
  

Not surprisingly, travel sites have the highest percentage of upper-income consumers.

• Households with income of $100,000 and above were 26.37% of Travelocity's traffic, 24.83% of Expedia's and 21.89% of Orbitz's.
• Also scoring well with high-end consumers were Amazon, where 21.96% of visitors have incomes over $100,000 and Target, with 21.61%.
• WalMart.com and Overstock scored the lowest with $100,000+ consumers, at 15.97% and 17.8%, respectively, but Overstock did better with the ultra high-end consumers, $150,000+. They represented 7.54% of Overstock's traffic, a percentage exceeded at that level only by Travelocity's 8.19% and Expedia's 7.9%. Orbitz's $150,000+ traffic was 7.38%.

The fact that women are more than half the traffic on Target.com, Walmart.com, Amazon.com and Yahoo Shopping (among others) is a yawner. What amazes me is that men are over 50% of the traffic at eBay. Wow! I wonder why this is. Are women more intimidated by the auction format? Is it because men tend more to be collectors and are, therefore, drawn to eBay in larger numbers?