Your online store is brimming with products and gifts for the holidays… now all you need is for eager customers to come and buy them up!

But what gets people more excited about shopping your store online? Price discounts or free shipping?

Well, it depends mostly on the age of your target demographic.

Following a recent study on this very topic, eMarketer reports that on the whole giving discounts edges out free shipping as an effective tactic for enticing online buyers.

But when you segment the study by the age of their respondents, more the data is more clear about how these two populations prefer to shop:

More than 2/3 of shoppers over the age of 45 report that free shipping is a more powerful motivator. They actually get annoyed by sites that don't offer free shipping!

On the other hand, consumers aged 18-45 would prefer to receive a discount. And of that group, 24-34 year olds were ONLY interested in percent-off deals.

(In a very unscientific poll here at PhotoBiz we seem to confirm these findings though there are only 2 people over 45 that were asked.)

So how can you make these numbers work for you?

Think about how to best target your customers with the kinds of deals they will best respond to. For example, you can segment your customer email lists by age and send targeted offers to each group – Free shipping to your older clients, a discount to your younger customers.

You can even try different offers to see which price point is most effective for each segment.