Designing for the real buyer: Why women drive the commerce + creator economy

For years, eCommerce and the creator economy have been framed around innovation in platforms, formats, and monetization models. We debate attribution windows, ad units and AI-powered recommendations. But too often, we miss the most fundamental question: who are we actually designing for? 

Women are not a niche audience or a secondary segment. They are the principal buyers of eCommerce and the connective tissue powering the commerce and creator economy. Women influence over $31.8 trillion in global annual spending and control 75% of discretionary, or non-essential, spending, making them major drivers of eCommerce. Women not only influence purchasing decisions, they are the dominant buyers in fashion, beauty, and groceries. 

Women Are the Centre of Gravity in eCommerce

Depending on the category, women influence or directly control an estimated 70–80% of consumer purchasing decisions. They are often the household CFOs, the planners, the researchers, and the final decision-makers. Not only for traditionally female-based categories, but across retail, CPG, travel, health, financial services, and big-ticket purchases. But what's frequently misunderstood is how women buy.

Women tend to research deeply and across channels, weaving together information from brand sites, marketplaces, social platforms and creator content before they buy. Trust, usability and transparency consistently outweigh novelty, and the goal is rarely a single transaction. It's about optimizing for outcomes: the right product, from the right brand, at the right moment, with confidence it will actually deliver.

This means eCommerce experiences built purely for speed or impulse often miss the mark. The real opportunity lies in designing journeys that support confidence, continuity, and context.

The Creator Economy Is a Trust Economy and Women Power It

The creator economy didn't explode because of better algorithms. It grew because it solved a trust gap. Women have long relied on social proof - recommendations from friends, peers, and experts - to make purchase decisions. Creators scaled that behavior. They turned word-of-mouth into content, and content into commerce.

Women are also the dominant creators driving commerce outcomes. They build credibility over time rather than chasing overnight virality. They integrate products into real-life use cases instead of idealized scenarios. And they consistently prioritize authenticity over performance theater - creating recommendations that feel useful, relatable, and trustworthy rather than transactional.

This is why creator-led commerce works best when it feels less like advertising and more like guidance. It's also why the most effective creators often outperform traditional ads.

Where Commerce Still Falls Short

Despite women driving demand across categories, many commerce experiences still aren't designed around their needs or their economic reality. Too often, systems are built to optimize for speed, scale or internal metrics rather than for how real purchasing decisions are actually made. We see this most clearly in the gaps between inspiration and action. Content sparks interest, but broken handoffs between content and checkout force users to start over. 

Mobile flows often prioritize raw speed over clarity, routing users to suboptimal destinations or breaking altogether. Attribution models continue to undervalue discovery, influence, and trust-building, clinging to last-click thinking in a world where purchasing journeys are inherently multi-touch, multi-session, and multi-platform.

The cost of these gaps is real. When a creator inspires a purchase but the path to buy is clunky, trust erodes. When discovery happens on one platform and conversion fails on another, value is lost. This is not just for brands, but also for creators whose influence goes unrecognized and for users whose intent goes unsupported. Designing for women means designing for the full journey, not just the final moment. It requires acknowledging that commerce doesn't begin at checkout. It begins at inspiration, and it succeeds only when every step in between actually works.

Beyond Celebration: Designing Systems That Recognise Women's Economic Power

If women are the primary drivers of commerce, then our systems - technology, measurement, and monetization - should reflect that reality.

That means building commerce infrastructure that values influence as much as conversion, continuity as much as speed, and trust as much as scale. It means designing attribution models that credit the creators and moments that shape intent, not just the last click that captures it. It means investing in mobile and cross-platform experiences that respect how women research, compare, and decide, rather than forcing them into simplified funnels that don't match their behavior.

Designing for the Real Buyer

If women are the real buyers, and they are, then the future of commerce design should reflect that reality. That means reducing friction between inspiration and action so that a moment of interest doesn't die in a broken link or clumsy mobile flow, and measuring true influence in a world where trust and intent are built long before checkout. Finally, it means treating creators as partners, not placements, acknowledging the real value they generate across the entire customer journey.

At Button, we see every day how powerful commerce becomes when the path from discovery to purchase actually works. Button has driven over $25B Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS) since its founding, solving the routing and attribution problem so many creators and brands still face today. When links don't break, when mobile checkout respects how people shop, and when creators are credited for the value they create, these are more than just technical improvements. They're design choices that acknowledge who commerce is really for. 

International Women's Day and the Bottom Line

International Women's Day is often framed as a moment for celebration and it should be, but it's also a moment for recognition. Women don't only participate in the commerce and creator economy, they drive it. Designing for women is about designing for reality. The brands, platforms, and creators who embrace that reality won't just keep up with the future of commerce - they'll lead it.