The Website Browser War and your Bottom Line

Companies and developers can go through a lot of trouble building a website. Despite all the work and effort, developers and site owners can forget one simple fact. It’s something called “browser standards.” What’s odd about browser standards is that they are not “standard.” This can (and should) be troubling, to us all.

Years ago, I myself was guilty of building “killer” sites for a clients, but only slanting it towards Internet Explorer, and then only the current and previous version. The reason? I made (false) assumptions about user behavior and tendencies to upgrade their software. Nothing could be further from the truth. How do I know this? Server logs. I read what people where actually doing. Live and learn is my motto.

Windows, Tigers, and Linux – oh my
I mentioned before the value of web analytics. Well, one item you can see is the type of browsers that people are using when they come to your website. Browser info can be pretty specific as well. You might be a little surprised at how many people still use IE5, instead of IE6. On top of that, you will notice people are using Firefox (which is having amazing market penetration), Netscape (there are those die hard people out there), Opera, Mozilla, Safari and more. Mentioning Safari and Firefox open another door, in how your website will look. Platforms. Shock of shocks. Even though Windows is the most widely used operating systems, Linux (Red Hat and the like) and Unix (Mac OS X) based systems are gaining much larger market share. Websites can look very different on these systems.

What would you do if you opened a brick and mortar business, but only some people could open the door and come in? What if it only opened for people 6 foot 4 and taller. Obviously you would a lot of business. The same principle applies to websites and browser compatibility. Getting this done should be an imperative, for the sake of our businesses.

One Power To Rule Them All
So what the solution to getting consistency, across web browsers and platforms? Is some level of consistency even possible? Good news. Yes! The answer is in something called CSS (cascading style sheets). Keep in mind not all browsers put to use every element of this standard. It might be a little time consuming but generally if you code your CSS to work on both IE and Firefox, you will pretty much cover everything. In truth if you really want to know the most “standards” compliant browser (to code for), that would be Opera which will soon be releasing version 9 of their (now) free browser.

You need to know, you can write CSS in such a way that if your code detects an IE web browser, one type of code will run in the CSS layer and another if another browser type is detected. Developing your website in this way can be a little time consuming, but is well worth the effort. It’s the difference in planning for the long-term as opposed to the short-term. In most instances, it just means creating well-formed code, as the website is being built, redesigned or refactored (the practice of taking old code and improving it so it’s more effective or up to snuff).

Begin With The End In Mind
Keep in mind that the reason that we go to the trouble of writing code that works well among as many web browsers as possible to provide “frictionless” experiences for site visitors. This should be a primary goal for all site owners and developers part.

Frictionless experiences do several things:
1. Makes visitors comfortable (regarding look, feel and style)
2. Consistency helps to build credibility
3. Greater success rate in visitor transactions (visitors getting appropriate info, client conversions, from filling out forms to making a purchase)
4. Enhances confidence in your brand identity and by extension your website, turning lookers into buyers
5. Improves your ROI. Measure twice cut once. If you take a haphazard approach to site development, it can and will cost you significantly more

// Jaye Morris, Technologist