Black Friday Browser Wars
Posted by goodmind on November 26th, 2008
War is costly – even the browser variety. It’s never a bad thing when implicit standards (ahem, Internet Explorer) are challenged. However, as Firefox, Chrome, etc continue to gain market share, web designers are hard pressed to keep pace with the idiosyncrasies of various browsers.
According to one alarmist press release, page load times, missing graphics, and entire check-out procedures can be compromised if a website hasn’t been optimized to accommodate all manner of web browsers.
Online retailers in particular will be at risk this holiday season, for reasons entirely unrelated to the current economic landscape. The look and functionality of a single site can vary dramatically from one browser to another. For e-commerce websites, this essentially amounts to the entire shopping experience.
The conspiracy theorist in us wants to believe the entire browser war conflict is actually the collective brainchild of brick-and-mortar shops, looking to shore up their books come Black Friday. In all seriousness however, it does beg the question of how an unstable browser market will effect your business. Does it really matter whether or not customers can find your company’s website if they can’t actually use it?
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