Re: UKNM: just one last rant on... browser compatibility - that old chestnut

[Mark Henderson-Thynne]

At 10:45 AM 9/23/99 +0100, you wrote:

>have you run any analysis on the proportionate spend of those with 

>older browsers?

>

>it seems to me from my limited experience of, say, 

>business-to-business e-commerce that the older the browser, the 

>longer the user has been on line, the more comfortable the user is 

>with online transactions... that's not even considering the thought 

>that the older the browser, the more likely the user to be in 

>education (which if you sell books might be worth a tiny amount of 

>consideration).


Let me offer an alternative view on that, the people using old browsers 

are either students whose IT departments haven't upgraded browsers

and have no money to spend online or academics/techies who are 

stuck in the past.


Most old "power users" who are likely to spend online will have updated

browsers semi-regularly to gain access to new features, bug fixes, and

user interface improvements. As an example I have been online since

91, started browsing using the first public beta of what was to become

Netscape, upgraded my browser every time there was a major new

version or bug fix and only recently switched to IE because it is now

faster and more reliable than Netscape and has a really useful feature

where it autocompletes form fields. In the last 12 months I have spent

over $10K online as well as researched a $35K car purchase.


However I still think sites should be compatible with v3 of browsers at a 

minimum and tend to avoid site with excessive use of flash etc, I prefer

a nice simple ecommerce site that allows me to easily find what I want 

to buy, remembers who I am, offers something like free shipping or 

clickmiles and doesn't pester me more than once a week or two with 

special offers by email. An example of the kind of ecommerce site I

hate is http://www.quixtar.com/, examples of excellent ecommerce 

sites are http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.800.com/ 


Regards,


Mark...... 

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