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

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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





>>>Accessibility. Not useability or degradeability.  Try running
>>your Excel 98
>>>Macros in Excel 2000.  Or worse, vice versa.
>
>>Which is fine if you have no effective competition in the Office Apps
>>market.
>
>>But online is very, very different.

>Huh?  why?  Are you saying MS can design their website to ie6
functionality
>and its ok for them, but it is not ok for Lotus?

No. It means that if you've locked people in like MS have for their desktop
apps, you can abuse them. That's why monopolies are seen as Bad Things.

But if you're creating a web site for a commercial client, they don't have
their
audience locked in. The competition is a couple of clicks away, so if your
site is hard to use, they'll go elsewhere very, very fast.

>
>>>Actually, is it academic?  aren't the aggregate stats saying you can
reach
>>>80% of a hell of a lot of people by targeting ie5+?  That's a hell of a
>>potential customer base as it is
>
>>Nope. That's absolutely not what the stats say. They *do not* say that
>>"Design for 5+ and you will be seen by 80% of the universe of web
>>users". They say "Design for 5+ and 80% of the universe of web users
>>and segments thereof is the maximum you will *ever* be able to

>Martin,  you have just said the same thing I did.  Design for 5+ and you
>reach a max of 80% of the universe of web users.
>That is 80% of a hell of a lot of people.

No, I said the opposite. You've made an enormous assumption that
you *will* reach that max - there are all the other factors in getting to
those people and motivating them to use the site and change their
behaviour.

>get." Or another way of putting it "Design for 5+ and you lose 20%
>of your turnover for no good reason".
>

>ahem, since when was a user by definition a customer?

Customers are a subset of users. And your assumption above made
them congruent.


Whilst many
businesses would love that to be true, I think history has shown that users
are not all customers.  Your comment would be fairer if it said "Design for
5+ and you lose 20% of the total web users, which is xx% of your
customers".
Get your client to fill in the xx.  Don't try and do it for them.

>>And remember that for most fixed cost businesses, it's usually that
>>last 20% who are pure profit - the other 80% pay the overheads.
>>Kind of like spread betting.
>

>disagree. on average 20% of customers will provide 80% of revenue.
>Therefore 80% provide 20% of revenue. Pure profit - no way.

Oversimplified, because of the assumption that you're running with
100% marginal costs. Almost no businesses do - and some are 100%
fixed costs (most service industries)

Example:
I run a hotel. It costs me $8k a week to run that hotel, full or empty.
I have 100 beds, each charged out at $100 a night. When I sell
80% of my weekly capacity, I make $8k. I break even. I only make
a profit when I sell over that.

Now if you've artificially limited my maximum sales to 80%, I'm
screwed.

>
>>But good marketing sense suggests that you'd give the customer the choice

>Like hell, if my business risk said 128bit encryption, you had better
>believe that I'd enforce 128bit encryption.

Whose risk is it? If it's the business risk, you have that right. If it's
the consumer's
risk, you don't.

Besides, there's much more risk with non-online channels - unless someone's
installed a scrambler on the phoneline I use to call my bank.

>Done business with an online bank lately?

Yup. Worked with and for them, thanks.

I believe I was talking about cc payments...

Cheers
Martin


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