When designing a new website or re-designing an existing one, there are, of course, a lot of things to think about and plan for. In our humble opinion here are Charlotte’s Web Studios, we think that ‘usability’ should always be at or near the top of that list. After all, if users cannot properly use a website, they won’t … and, isn’t that the point?
So, in addition to making your website look great, properly planning your website to ensure that it is easy to understand, use and follow is imperative. Usability testing is important and, on a very basic level, includes making sure that a website works properly across different operating systems and browsers.
What Browsers Do People Use?
Like most things today, there are a lot of choices when it comes to operating systems and browsers, but there are really just a handful of standard browsers that you need to worry about. According to w3schools.com, as of April 2015, the majority of web users were using the Google Chrome browser (63.9% of users). Firefox comes in a distant second at 21.6%, then Internet Explorer (8%), Safari (3.8%) and finally Opera (1.5%).
While Chrome has, by and far, the largest percentage of internet users today, that still leaves about 36% of users who will access your website using a variety of other browsers. You’ll definitely want to ensure that your website looks good and works properly for everyone, so at the very minimum, you’ll want to test your website on the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera. You’ll also want to test on some previous versions of each as well.
Although potentially very time consuming, cross browser testing is a necessary evil. And, while ensuring that your website code adheres to web standards is an important first step, actually testing your website on different browsers and versions of browsers is imperative.
Contact us for more information on how we can help you cross browser test your website!
