[thelist] Old Browsers old Software, cut bait and move on.

[Mark Cheng]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
>[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of aardvark

> >Depends on the benefit case. If you're working on a site with a tight
>> >business case, losing 10% of your users without good reason could be
>> >the difference between substantial profit or loss.
>>
>> Any project which can't take variances of 10% of potential users
>> shouldn't be doing it in the first place.  Particularly if losing 10%
>> is going to give you a substantial loss.
>
>well, i think boo.com and etoys.com are perfect examples of how
>alienating users can hurt the bottom line... that 10% was critical to
>them...
>

Microsoft is a perfect example of how alienating users doesn't make a
difference to the bottom line.

>look at fuckedcompany.com, and see how many of them relied on
>just that thin of a margin to make their business model work (or
>fail)...
>
>look at the ones who survive, they seem to either not piss off 10%
>of their users, or have a larger buffer...
>
>which is it?

My guess is have a larger buffer and not piss off 10% of their clients.
Note that I said clients.  If they piss of 10% of the people who hit their
website well, so what? There are always going to be businesses that try to
run on really thin margins, but if your clients are trying to do that on the
web I suggest you get paid in advance.

The basic problem with trying to predict web sales is that you can't.
Caches, ISPs, hidden referrers etc etc corrupt the data that you can see,
which, even worse, is stated in percentages for the most part.  What is it a
percentage of? US adult male users? Global users?

What about the 5% of users that show up as unknown?

Businesses make numerous assumptions before they even get to the point of
saying they need a web site. For a website which is driving sales, business
doesn't care which browser is used to make the sale.  They will care about
ongoing maintenance, ease of updating, and the cost of putting it there in
the first place.

Lets assume that the business has identified their target demographic as
game playing male teenagers.  Now, you may be able to get statistics of how
many male teenagers used  the net in a particular area with what browser -
and they'd be about as reliable as asking the 5 kids down the street.
However, you can assume that they will have up to date machines, probably
with decent video/graphics cards to help them do that.

Sure, you can use server side languages to serve up the exact same page to
each individual browser, just in case, but when you look at the effort of
doing that compared to the additional percentage of sales you'd need to get
from the gen 5, is it worthwhile?

Now, the major exception here is accessibility.  I believe that it is good
business to make the site accessible to people with disabilities (because it
can be costly not to).

Choosing to use an old browser doesn't obligate a business to provide for
that.  Web designers need to tell / show the client what the site would look
like in an uncatered for browser (or with JS off or images off or whatever).
"Educating" clients that they need to support older browsers catering for a
possibly small potential audience outside the businesses target demographic
isn't good advice.


This email may be confidential and contain commercially sensitive information.  Only the intended recipient may access or use it.  If you are not the intended recipient please delete this email and notify us promptly. 
We use virus scanning software but exclude all liability for viruses or similar in this email or any attachment.