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Do Men and Women Shop Online Differently?

This infographic tackles the question of whether men and women differ in their online shopping habits. I know that personally, my wife and I differ. I buy things online, pay for them via PayPal, and am done with it. My wife tends to like larger purchases that require multiple payments, so that when I go to balance the bank account I have to remember that the $48.78 from Online Vendor A is from that “6 payments with no interest” for a fancy bowl, household appliance, or pair of shoes. But I digress…

Annual Spending

The first subject the infographic addresses is the average annual online spending for men and women, depending on age. We find that people in their thirties buy about the same amount as people in their mid fifties or early sixties, though women around 26 years old do the most amount of online shopping. The creators of the graphic make a little joke, saying that men of a certain age shop online less because they “may be too busy with their midlife crises” and they tell us that women 45-54 are in the prime of their career and have less time to shop, but that they still spend about $200 more per year than men of the same age (the ones busy with their midlife crises).

Shopping Times

We’re given the information that most online purchases are made between 12-1 PM and 7-8 PM. Women make most of their online purchases during their lunch hour, men make their purchases in the evening. Actually, that’s if the graphic is to be believed. If you read what they tell you, only 8% of the 7-8 PM purchases are made by men. So, the 7-8 PM wedge of the pie being blue may be misleading. Since the lines int he top graph aren’t too far apart, I guess we can just assume that fewer men make larger purchases.

Average Shopping Time

It says that men take an average of ten minutes to complete their online purchase, while women take fourteen minutes. They tell us “a guy’s purchase decision is a tactical execution,” while “a woman’s purchase decision is a philosophical examination.” Even if that’s so, I guess it only takes a woman about four extra minutes to get all philosophical.

Average Spending

This sort of confirms what we said earlier, that men might spend more than women, but the numbers do not differ that much, only about $67.82 for a man’s average purchase, $51.84 for a woman’s. They do say that men are “more tenured” at shopping online and that explains their comfort with buying more expensive items. Hm.

Purchases by Day of the Week

We’re told that men do the reconnaissance on the weekends, then go to work Monday morning to bargain hunt and make the purchase. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are pretty even with the male/female split, but women shop a tiny bit more on Thursdays, men shop more on Fridays, and women shop more on Saturdays and Sundays.

Returning Goods

According to Forrester Research, men return items faster. If they are going to return it they will do so within the first day or two, and the average (which is not indicative of the reality) is within 21 days. Women, who return items less frequently, will do around day 4 or day 5.

Design: B

They use blue and pink for men and women, respectively, which is the most logical choice, I suppose, but with the marbled pink, blue, and yellow background it sort of looks like a nursery gone wrong. The typeface used is pleasant, and the whole thing is arranged nicely.

Information: A

If it’s true, it gets an A. I feel like the averages take a lot of extreme variables into account, so the overview we’re getting is slightly watered-down, but for what it is, it’s fine.

Source: Extrabux.com provides coupons and cash back

Saving Money on International Calling

The creators of this infographic describe it by way of this little blurb:

“Ensuring that you stay in contact with family and friends while traveling abroad requires careful planning. The infographic provides a step-by-step guide on how to research phone compatibility with international servers as well as selecting a mobile operator that will help you save money in the long-run. Interesting international phone call statistics are used to highlight the growing importance of cross-continent telephone usage.”

The infographic has pleasing colors and appealing graphics – the stick figures at the top with their cans with strings attaching them made me smile right away. I always wondered why anybody would ever think that would work – that you could talk into cans attached by string? Turns out, according to some science blog, that it DOES work over short distances because talking into the cup creates vibrations that travel along the string, causing the same vibrations to happen in the second cup, thus making it possible for the person to hear what the other person said into the other cup. The string has to be tight for this to work. And, obviously, phones work better, especially for international calls. Anyway, I digress….

Underneath the cute cartoon stick people with their cans and string (a string that is not tight, mind you) is a question from an (I assume) imaginary person named Sally Cavill who is asking about the least expensive way to keep in touch with her daughter, who is going to be in the U.S. for a month. The infographic is branded by the company that created it, and that company happens to be a U.K. company. The answer to “Sally’s” question comes from the company, who set up the rest of the infographic by stating that they’ve summarized the best ways to keep in touch inexpensively. They finish up with “Sally” by giving some tips on what her daughter should do before leaving the country.

Phone Bill Savings Methods

This section gives an overview of the best mobile networks for U.K.-based people to stay in touch from all over the world. They include the O2, Vodafone, Orange, T Mobile, and Three mobile operators, and give you a summary of the plans available for international calling. They then go into the PC-based ways to stay in touch, mentioning Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Jajah, and Fring, discussing the offerings of each. Finally, they give two options for calling cards and SIM cards – Story and IDT, and give you the scoop on those. They use the company logos, which helps the would-be shopper and researcher become familiar with the brand they are referencing, but with so many competing colors, even though the infographic is generously spaced, it still seems a bit busy.

Cheapest to Most Expensive Methods for Staying in Touch

The next section rates the methods mentioned in the previous sections from least expensive to most expensive. The typeface used throughout the infographic is pleasant and easy-to-ready, but again I find myself distracted by the colors. The background of the whole thing is shades of blue honeycomb pattern, so the use of red, lime green, orange, and yellow, while easy to see, is a little off-putting. This section, however is very informative, and presents the information in the last section in a more condensed way, showing the viewer, from cheapest to most expensive, the options for staying in touch while overseas.

Interesting Facts

This is where it gets busier, but also very interesting. The honeycomb changes colors (to a disturbing bruise color, really) and informs the reader that the first TransAtlantic call took place on March 7, 1926 from London to New York. I wish it said who made that phone call, but that’s OK. The infographic then shows the top five fixed line call destinations from the UK – the use of red is still bugging me here – and the top 5 are…well, look up there. It’s all right there on the image. Then there are statistics from 2009 showing the number of UK households that use VoIP and the percent of people in the UK who are VoIP subscribers, and then there is a little section about Skype. Even though they use the blue color for that section because it’s the Skype color, I would have like to have seen blues throughout. It would have been easier on the eyes, I think.

Design: B-

The colors were distracting, and the thing was a little too spread out for my taste, though I liked the cartoon people and the typeface used.

Information: A-

A handy guide for someone in the U.K. who is looking to travel and stay in touch with family members without spending a fortune.

Source: Avoiding A Large Phone Bill When Travelling Infographic from EssentialTravel.co.uk

2011 SAP Salary Survey

This robust infographic, generously provided by InfoNewt.com, shows data about SAP professionals that was gathered via an annual survey. The earnings of an SAP professional depend on many variables, including their location, education level, and experience, as well as the location of the company they work for, the SAP version they are working on, the industry they are in, and their gender. The survey was conducted by Panaya to help people compare their composition makeup to their industry peers, better understand what drives compensation in this market, and get useful ideas so that they can ultimately increase their value.

The first portion of the graphic is entitled integrator vs. customer. Overall, states the graphic, the median salaries for SAP professionals employed by companies is higher than their counterparts who work for SAP integrators. Gender also plays an important role in how high or low a person’s salary is. Women tend to keep pace with men for about ten years; then men’s begin to balloon while women’s stay stagnant.

What about geography? How does that play a role. Welp, salaries on average are higher in North America. Education absolutely also impacts the level of earnings. People with doctoral degrees earn more than people with lesser degrees.

Ready for the grading portion? I am too. Let’s roll.

Design: A

The design is quite solid. The charts are superlative. The colors shine off the page. Overall, I would say that the graphical elements deliver a well-balanced “punch” to your senses.

Content: A

A stand-up job on the part of the creators here. Taking the data from the SAP annual survey and converting it into a compelling could not have been easy. It would seem that a hearty “Kudos!” is in order.

Cosmetic Surgery Infographic

You may remember the plastic surgery infographic we ran a few months ago that detailed the most popular types of plastic surgery in the United Kingdom. Well, today, we have a graphic that examines surgery from a rather different perspective–and a fresh one. Just how much do celebrities influence people’s decisions to go under the knife, and which celebrities are people influenced the most by?

It’s safe to say that the planet has an addiction to plastic surgery–I mean, there were only 17 million procedures last year. This graphic first presents a comparison of the total number of procedures performed in each country. The U.S. leads the way with 3.03 million in 2009, but Brazil is knocking down its door, with 2.4 million. Then the graphic points out that 90% of the operations were undergone by women. The most popular procedure? You guessed it. Breast augmentation surgery.

Now, here’s where this graphic gets interesting. Really interesting. In 2009, the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery carried out a study of the most requested celebrity traits by patients in order to determine just how much our society has influenced people’s personal tastes. The study asked people what celebrity lips, nose, legs etc. they would prefer to have as their own. The results were predictable in some areas and surprising in others. Tina Turner, for instance, had the most desired celebrity legs despite being 71 years old. It is now time for everybody’s favorite segment. The grading segment. Hold onto your nose. We wouldn’t want it falling off during the ride.

Design: B+

The design here is solid. I couldn’t find any problems with it. The color scheme is desirable, and it holds your attention all the way through. Given the set of data the creators had to work with, I’d say they handled the material very well.

Content: A

The creators took the intriguing results of polls and presented them in intriguing ways. It would have been easy for someone to take the lazy approach and just republish the information in standard charts (or sub-standard charts if you’ve seen the graphics we’ve had to put up with lately here). But they went the extra mile and created captivating graphics and charts to ensure that the interesting data they had to work with remained interesting.

So, has this graphic implanted any seeds in your mind? Will you break down and get plastic surgery anytime soon?

This graphic has been graciously provided by Mya.co.uk.

White Van Infographic

Ever wondered why there are so many white vans in England? Ever wondered exactly how many there really are? Well, thank the creators of this very amusing infographic then because you are about to have your questions answered. There are a whopping 2.5 million white vans in the UK. That means that there is one white van to every 24 people–quite a lot. Now, I’m no statistics expert, but I think it’s safe to say that there is no shortage of them. Ok, so we know they can be found around every street corner of the country, but where, specifically, are they?

Well, according to the graphic, most of them are in Essex, Kent, and Lancashire. Now, given how many white vans there are and how widespread the whole phenomenon has become, you might be surprised to learn that the phrase was coined no earlier than 1997. Sarah Kennedy first uttered the words on BBC Radio 2 in that year. So, what is the average distance driven by a “white van man” over the course of a year in the UK? Like all of these type of stats, the number will likely frighten you. And that number is (drumroll please) 9,426 miles, or, if you haven’t been adequately frightened yet, equivalent to driving around the length of the country 13 and a half times.

White van drivers compose the finest parts of the English population. They are well-read (more than half are regular book worms according to the graphic) and almost never get into an accident (68% of drivers have no insurance claims).

Grading Scorecard

Design: B+

The design here is rather unique and draws you in. While it’s certainly not the most eye-popping graphic we’ve ever showcased here, it holds its own against any of the other graphics on this site.

Content: A

The content was more than solid, with an excellent mix of raw facts that surprise you (such as how many miles the average white van driver spends on the road in a year), and facts that make you chuckle up a storm (such as how many cheesy wotsits could be moved if you had 772 white vans). I lost my turkey strudel after reading that.

Overall, this graphic is certainly at the top of its class.

Infographic provided by Autonetinsurance.co.uk

How much is a petabyte infographic

The preceding infographic, provided by the online storage site Mozy, is an intense look at all the qualities of a petabyte, which is equal to one quadrillion bytes. Quite a lot of memory, right? To put things into perspective, one single petabyte is equal to 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text, as the graphic notes. It’s also equal to 13.3 years of HD-TV video. So, how much are 1.5 petabytes equal to? That’s the size of 10 billion photos on Facebook. When you start getting into 20 petabytes, you begin looking at crazy numbers, for 20 petabytes is the amount of data that Google processes on a single day. And get this, the total manufactured hardrive space in 1995 was equal to about 20 petabytes. Ready for a stat sure to shake you out of your boots? 50 petabytes, only 30 more than 20 obviously, is equal to the entire written collection of work by all of mankind (in all languages) since the dawn of civilization. So, when you consider that Google processes 20 petabytes in a single day, it’s not inconceivable at all to think it will one day have records of every single text in human history. I mean, they are already processing more than 50 petabytes of data in a given week.

Since this graphic was created by Mozy, you might be wondering how many petabytes Mozy has stored, and the answer to that question is roughly 15 petabytes. The graphic contains many intriguing facts, such as the fact that that worldwide datacenters now annually consume as much energy as Sweden. Hardrives are getting larger and larger, but they remain affordable because the price of them continues to go down. In 2007, Hitachi announced the world’s first terabyte hard drive which holds 1000 Gigabytes. One company, Colossal storage, predicts that it will have a 1.2 petabyte hard drive on the market in the next 2-5 years. Ok, let’s jump into the grading portion.

Design: A-

The graphic doesn’t rely on fancy gimmicks–it goes for elegant simplicity, and it delivers. The graphic’s plain yet visually appealing color scheme shows in many ways how less is more.

Content: A-

I am giving the content high marks as well. A top-notch research job by Mozy. A superb collection of facts. A cool, silicon avatar. Overall, a very impressive graphic.

Cloth Diapering Infographic

Ah, cloth diapers. The stuff that dreams are made of. Not only do babies appreciate them more because of the comfort that cloth provides, but parents like them because of the cash they save by reusing the same diaper. So, considering that cloth diapers are superior in every conceivable way, why don’t more people use them?

Probably because they’re lazy. The above infographic shows that Americans dispose of five garbage bags full of diapers every five seconds. But wait, there’s more disturbing stats! If disposable diapers never existed, there would be 16 million more trees on the planet. Think disposable diapers are the devil yet? No? Ok, try this on for size. Disposable diapers are filled with sodium polyacrylate, which was banned from tampons because it was shown to cause toxic shock syndrome.

Alright, but I know what you’re thinking. Disposable diapers eventually decompose, so overtime, no harm, no foul right? Well, as you noticed in the graphic above, disposable diapers take a mere 400 years (on average) to decompose. So, I suppose if you consider 400 years to be a small length of time in the grand scheme of existence, that doesn’t bother you. But for most people, 4 centuries is a fairly long time.

There are really no good arguments to continue using disposable diapers, and the reality is that if its use is never stopped, our planet will just continue to erode.

Infographics Scorecard

Design: A-

The use of pictures in this graphic is superb. They capture your attention from the onset and hold it all the way through.

Content: A-

Key facts are presented in a simple, yet thorough way. The creators of this infographic were attempting to layout a case that plastic diapers should be eradicated. Did they succeed? I think so. Bottom line: this is a top-flight infographic that every infographic artist should try to emulate.

Graphic supplied by: Clothdiapers.org