Friday, June 02, 2006
Visitors, Browsers and SEO
When desiging a web site, there are 2 objectives you need to keep in mind for 2 different reasons:
When a visitor comes to your web site, there are many factors that will 'colour' what they think of your web site. Some of these things are:
For example, there are only a very small number of fonts that are installed on all Windows based computers (eg. Arial, Verdana, Times, Courier and Trebuchet). This means that if you use a font that is on your computer but which is not on your visitors' computer then the text and layout of your site may not look 'right' on your visitors' monitor.
Consequently, when designing a web site for visitors, you need to know certain things about your visitors. For example,
Fortunately, there is an excellent site that will give you the numbers on who is using what, Browser Statistics. At the time of the writing of this post, this is what they concluded based on the current stats:
"What you can read from the statistics below is that Internet Explorer 6 is the dominating browser, XP is the most popular operating system, and most users are using a display with 1024x768 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors."
This means that, if you want to design a web site aimed at the majority of web surfers, then you should design it for MSIE6, for a screen resolution of 1024x768 and with colour graphics that contain at least 65K colours.
BUT, you must make sure also not to ignore your other visitors. You hence need to know, for example, how many use screen resolutions of 800x600? The answer is 20%, so you need to keep them in mind when designing your site.
It is safe today to ignore screen resolutions of 640x480 as the stats show that 0% use that screen resolution.
The stats also point out that 90% of browsers have JavaScript enabled, which means that you can safely use it BUT be aware that some of your visitors (1 in 10) will be affected by the JavaScript code of your web site.
If you want to see what your web site looks like in different browsers, then you could install the different browsers of interest on your computer or you could use the services of BrowserShots. Be careful though, the image they showed of what my site looks like in FireFox did not match what my site actually looks like in FireFox.
While on the topic of browsers, you may find it interesting to visit evolt.org to see just how many different browsers there are. You may be surprised by the list they have . . .
Serge
- you need to properly SEO optimize your web site in order to please the search engines, and
- you need to make your web site attractive and easy to use in order to please your visitors.
When a visitor comes to your web site, there are many factors that will 'colour' what they think of your web site. Some of these things are:
- the type of browser they use,
- the operating system they use,
- the number of colours their monitor is using ie. colour depth,
- the size they have set their monitor to using ie. display resolution,
- whether they have JavaScript enabled or disabled,
- and so on ...
For example, there are only a very small number of fonts that are installed on all Windows based computers (eg. Arial, Verdana, Times, Courier and Trebuchet). This means that if you use a font that is on your computer but which is not on your visitors' computer then the text and layout of your site may not look 'right' on your visitors' monitor.
Consequently, when designing a web site for visitors, you need to know certain things about your visitors. For example,
- how many use the new MSIE 7?
- how many use the old MSIE 6?
- how many use the older versions of MSIE?
- how many use Firefox?
- how many use Opera?
- how many use Windows?
- how many use Mac's?
- how many use Linux?
- how many use screen resolutions of 1024x768?
- how many use screen resolutions of 800x600?
- how many have JavaScript enabled in their browsers?
- and so on . . .
Fortunately, there is an excellent site that will give you the numbers on who is using what, Browser Statistics. At the time of the writing of this post, this is what they concluded based on the current stats:
"What you can read from the statistics below is that Internet Explorer 6 is the dominating browser, XP is the most popular operating system, and most users are using a display with 1024x768 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors."
This means that, if you want to design a web site aimed at the majority of web surfers, then you should design it for MSIE6, for a screen resolution of 1024x768 and with colour graphics that contain at least 65K colours.
BUT, you must make sure also not to ignore your other visitors. You hence need to know, for example, how many use screen resolutions of 800x600? The answer is 20%, so you need to keep them in mind when designing your site.
It is safe today to ignore screen resolutions of 640x480 as the stats show that 0% use that screen resolution.
The stats also point out that 90% of browsers have JavaScript enabled, which means that you can safely use it BUT be aware that some of your visitors (1 in 10) will be affected by the JavaScript code of your web site.
If you want to see what your web site looks like in different browsers, then you could install the different browsers of interest on your computer or you could use the services of BrowserShots. Be careful though, the image they showed of what my site looks like in FireFox did not match what my site actually looks like in FireFox.
While on the topic of browsers, you may find it interesting to visit evolt.org to see just how many different browsers there are. You may be surprised by the list they have . . .
Serge
