> How
>you can expect users to go back to your website if half of it doesn't work
>because they haven't got the right settings or the latest browser? This
>seems to be a very narrow minded attitude to have and will cost you
>potential customers and clients.
Our site is geared to a specialized sector of health and nutrition and we
find that a lot of our customers are 55+. MANY of these folks have hand me
down computers from their kids or bought second hand "cause they heard
about this newfangledinternetthingie. (ok this is changing a bit...)
Looking at our site statistics from the last year is interesting
Netscape 3 - 3.52%
MSIE 3 - 1.09%
WebTV 1 - 0.71%
AOL 3 - 0.64%
Netscape 2 - 0.16%
Other - 0.14%
Netscape 5 - 0.06%
MSIE 2 - 0.03%
IBrowse 1 - 0.02%
AOL-IWENG 3 - 0.02%
This tells me that almost 7% of our visitors are using outdated browsers
(and those few poor souls who are using Netscape 5...hehe). When I took
over admin of the site 2 years ago, I removed a ton of javascript which was
making a mess of things. (especially with IE3.0 users). I also got rid of
animated gifs, a scrolling java applet and a bunch of other geewhiz stuff.
I went completely the other way and set the site up as almost entirely text
based and got a ton of mail saying thank you. Our customers didn't want any
of that stuff. They wanted information, an easy shopping experience and
that its IT.
Based on these changes (and some work on search engine placements), our
site usage (which had been pretty static for several years) has increased
400% in 2 years. We also have something like a 14% Browser to Buyer
conversion rate which is better than a lot of the top ecomm numbers
(amazon.com 8.7%). Granted our overall numbers are tiny compared to the
volume that the big guys do..(but then again we MADE money last
year...hehe) The biggest thing I notice is that I almost never get mail
about the site anymore, which tells me that people are using it and not
fighting with it.
BTW, one good thing that happened this year was the certificate expiration
which forced a lot of folks to upgrade to newer versions so we are seeing a
lot more 4+ versions showing up on the site these days. Haven't had a
Netscape 2 user for a couple months now...lol
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