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

[Martin]

Mark Cheng wrote on 12/7/01 7:51 am

>>> Microsoft is a perfect example of how alienating users doesn't make a
>>> difference to the bottom line.
>>
>>no, but it does get them tangled up in all sorts of litigation and anti-
>>trust cases...
>>
>>and MS actually does a good job of accessibility in their apps,
>>when they do them right...
>
>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.

>>exactly... which is why so much of this thread is academic... many
>>larger sites do focus groups and have qualified researchers tell
>>them what those numbers are, and how they break down... for
>>sites without those budgets, you have to rely on aggregate stats
>>and experience...
>>
>
>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
get." Or another way of putting it "Design for 5+ and you lose 20%
of your turnover for no good reason".

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.

>>again, that's the rub... we were initially talking about sites that do
>>the transaction... it's been modified by the original poster to
>>become the marketing sites that fuel the decision to do make the
>>transaction...
>
>Yeah, but if I was advising a client on an e-commerce site I'd go for the
>highest level of encryption available in the browser population.  For an
>ecom site security of comms between the browser and the server should
>dictate - business risk will dictate what level of encryption the client is
>happy to accept.

But good marketing sense suggests that you'd give the customer the choice 
-
as Amazon does. "We strong suggest you use the secure server (it's the
default option), but if it doesn't work for you, then you can use the
other one because you're 2 clicks away from giving us your money
and we don't want to prevent that"

Cheers
Martin

Cheers
Martin

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