Building Websites for the 97%

That technology changes often and a business must adapt to the changes is one of the things we all need to keep in mind if we don’t want to be left in the dust. Browsers should be upgraded when new versions become available. As more and more companies build fancier, swankier websites, you don’t want to be struggling to see theirs, and you want to show the world you’re moving forward also. It was just about a year ago that the big word was “responsive” to mobile, and that alone is a reason to build a new website with current technology.

Just last week a friend shared a site built with WordPress and custom CSS, and wondered why they couldn’t see it correctly. It was loading a “print preview” type of look, instead of the site’s colors and structured layout. I looked on multiple browsers and it looked fine to me. Sure, colors can vary (Mac to PC) and sometimes alignment can be off from one browser to another, but it’s never been the case that a site couldn’t be seen at all. I have run across some websites that wouldn’t load, so I would open the site on another computer and browser and they loaded fine. But so far this has never been a concern with a WordPress website.

After getting the specifics and doing some investigating, we discovered that my friend was trying to view the site in Internet Explorer 8, which is 4 versions behind 11, the current version. Most web developers design for 3 versions back.

Additional research shows that only 3.1 percent of Internet users are still using IE 8, and that number keeps going down, according to w3schools’ website. So, should sites with a fresh look and the latest SEO be developed for the 3 percent, or for the other 97 percent of the public?

Here is a link (and the charts below) to show the current statistics of browser users and then the percentage of IE users that are on version 8. As you can see at the rate of decline, the number using IE 8 will be close to 0 pretty soon.

browser statistics chart
 
IE Browser statistics chart

It’s also important to remember that with updated browsers you get added protection, which is important to your computer’s health and longevity.

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