[thelist] targeting effectively (was: navigation through form posting)

[Matt Liotta]

The is right on the money. While it is certainly possible to develop sites
that cater to everyone, it is a waste of money. It simple costs more to make
a site accessible every different browser. If the market research says 90%
of my users have browsers that support my site than I am doing fine. It
would probably cost me more money than I would make to try and get my site
to support the other 10%. This is what is known as the law of diminishing
returns.

-Matt

On 3/24/02 2:12 PM, "David Kutcher" <david_kutcher at hotmail.com> wrote:

>>> Yes, I'm certain that some user is going to go to your
>>> site with a WAP handheld to view your content and pay
>>> $1.95/minute.
>>> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>>
>> did i say wap?  no, i said handheld.  the ambiguity was on purpose.
>>
>> as an example, i could pull up any number of sites using my palm (if i had
> one) and wouldn't pay a dime to do it.
> Incorrect.  You're paying a per minute charge for wireless access on your
> palm or at minimum a $30/month ISP cost over a (at best) 19200 baud
> connection.
>
>> nope.  however, if a handheld user were to visit my homepage, i'd hope
> it'd degrade gracefully and still be usable.
>
> WHY?  Why must it?  I fail to see why a site should cater to all users as
> opposed to their target audience and target devices.  That's the point of
> market research, branding, and audience development.  To target a sector(s)
> and market to them effectively.  Diluting your presence to "degrade
> gracefully" so that one user who uses Netscape 1.0 can view the site nicely,
> IMHO, is ridiculous.  Making "one site" to cater to all devices is equally
> ridiculous.  Determine the device, route it to the "sub-site" that displays
> effectively to that device.  That's why they have device types.
>
> If a company researches their site statistics and recognizes that 99% of
> their audience uses IE 5.0+, why cater to that 1% using lynx at the possible
> expense of not wowing the other 99% with a remarkable presence?
>
> Maybe I'm in the minority on this one, but hell, I educate the client in
> what their site statistics mean.  When we discuss how to proceed, I tell
> them exactly what will be gained and lost by optimizing for 4.0+ browsers.
> I have NEVER had a client say "please make it accessible on text only
> browsers" or "yes, I would like it minus functionality that 1% of the users
> of my site will not be able to enjoy or will cause them an error".
>
> They ask me questions like "when were 4.0+ browsers released", "what percent
> of the market uses non-4.0+ browsers", and even "how will it look on AOL"...
> but with those caveats (AOL visibility), they invariably decide on using
> DHTML, possibly flash, and almost all require javascript.
>
> David
> www.confluentforms.com