What do people really see when they go on your website?
(It could be NOTHING!)
As most people know, the program or application through which you are viewing this web page known as a ‘browser’. You may be using Internet Explorer 7, 6 (or maybe even older!); it could be Firefox (Mozilla Family), it could be Safari (on the Mac) or it could be number of other browsers or mobile devices such as a mobile phone or Blackberry. Each of these browsers will interpret the code that drives your website differently (depending on how your website is built). Crucially, this can affect how your website is displayed, and could actually mean that your website’s main content may not be appearing at all. It goes without saying how detrimental this could be to your business.
To prove that this isn’t just a made-up fact (to scare you into finally getting your website up to professional web standards!), there are some W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) statistics which demonstrate how browser usage breaks down.
2008 Browser Usage (up to and including April 2008):
A bit more about the W3C…
The W3C, founded by Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the internet) is a standards body that seeks to standardise best practice and technology development across the internet. One of the services they provide is to collect and provide up-to-date statistics which chart browser usage.
By reviewing the figures published by the W3C, you can quickly see the story behind the data and the potential challenges your website faces every day.
As you can see above, the Internet Explorer family (IE7, IE6 and IE5) is still the most popular browser, with over 50% usage. This is closely followed by Firefox (Fx) which month on month, enjoys a growing popularity amongst the more savvy web users. Looking at April’s statistics, potentially 39.1% of the people who visit your website could be Firefox users. Given the fact that your website might have been designed only with Internet Explorer users in mind, (before Firefox’s massive growth in popularity), and may not be able to see all (or any!) of your content, this is a statistic that you probably can’t afford to ignore.
The modern internet user is not only accessing the internet through their laptops and desktop PCs. What about screen readers for disabled or impaired users? What about mobile devices, PDAs, iphones etc?
This kind of accessibility is something that large companies have had to grasp quickly, but it has now become an issue that no business can afford to ignore. Be it a small business owner or a company’s marketing department - anyone serious about using the web as part of their marketing strategy should ensure that their site works on all of these browsers and devices in order to reach the maximum number of users possible. So, that’s Firefox, various versions of Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari (and other browsers not mentioned!), AND all the above mentioned mobile devices.
In summary…
*The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), along with other groups and standards bodies, has established technologies for creating and interpreting web-based content. These technologies, which we call “web standards,” are carefully designed to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users while ensuring the long-term viability of any document published on the Web.
Taken from Web Standards Project website.
Web Standards* exist for many reasons - cross-browser acceptance and device independence are two very important ones. Having your website designed using Web Standards, ensures that your site works in many different browsers and devices, directly increasing your reach to existing and potential customers both now and in the future. There are countless other benefits to designing in Web Standards such as faster pages, improved search engine indexing potential…the list goes on - topics for another day!
Redhead Media are a Web Standards focused company ensuring that clients’ websites reach maximum usage and portability. For more information call 01428 788170 or email hello@redheadmedia.co.uk
