Shopping online has become extremely popular amongst adolescent teens, and even more so for those that are still without a driver’s license. Though this age group is too young to have their own credit cards, they are the largest growing demographic. And when you think about it, it just makes sense. Instead of parents having to walk around malls for hours for back to school shopping or other needs, they can sit their computer savvy teens at the computer to pick out exactly what they want. When it comes time to buy, they just hand over their credit card or go through the payment process for them. How much more simple is that than running from store to store? The kids can even take as long as they want finding the things they want, saving their shopping carts from day to day so that parents can make the purchase when it is convenient. According to ComScore, four out of five kids from the ages of twelve to seventeen spend time on retail websites. In 2006 alone, Ebay had almost six and a half million teen users. These figures are way to big to ignore, and online retailers have to be savvy to their young audience in order to take advantage of the huge opportunity. This includes advertising, layout, and simplicity.

Keeping up with product trends is an obvious necessity for any retail store desiring to compete in the teen market, and this especially goes for online stores. Utilizing trend following advertisement, product displays, language, and music is likely to keep a teen’s attention. However, you must keep a balance of trendy innovation and simplicity. It is somewhat of a misnomer that teens are super tech savvy. Yes, this age group has grown up with the advantage of many technological advances such as text messaging and mp3’s, but when it comes to monetary transactions and comprehension, their level of attention and proficiency is quite low. They cannot be expected to spend time reading lengthy explanations or follow an extremely long series of steps to make a purchase. The buying process must be very straight forward and fast.

One of the major ways to increase simplicity is to have your own Internet merchant account or credit card merchant account. Yes, you can use third party processing services to allow your customers to make a purchase, but this complicates the process by adding an extra set of instructions and pages that must be completed to finally confirm a transaction. Through the confusion you are highly likely to lose a teen shopper along the way. The same is true if a parent is making a purchase. The point of their children shopping online is to save time, so they will be looking for an extremely straightforward checkout system. In fact, the simplicity of a check out system will also cause parents to influence their children to use that site again. When parents find an easy way to do things, they are likely to repeat it, and for this reason, a credit card merchant account can greatly increase your success.

When trying to tap into the online teen shopping world, remember to keep it simple, hip, and fun. Spend plenty of time perfecting your checkout process and researching the current trends.

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