Being a conscientious developer, and one who occasionally has to justify a design decision to the person with the cash, I like to keep up with stats.

 

Anyhow, the stats which I get just generally off the internet tend to be seriously out of whack with the stuff I get from Google Analytics, and not just by a little bit.

 

These stats are drawn from my general preconception (from W3Schools and similar) and 2 large sites I set up Adwords for, with about 4000 visits logged for each.

 

For example:

Java(script) support

General: 94% support

Site A : 98% support

Site B : 99.7% support

 

Screen resolution 800x600

General: 25%

Site A : 5.2%

Site B : 4.8%

 

Browser - Firefox - this is the only one which nails it pretty much

General: 10 - 15%

Site A : 12%

Site B : 11%

 

Does anyone else find that the "well known" statistics just dont match up to actual experience?

 

on a side note

On each of these sites, I occasionally notice a die-hard browser using antiquated technology... Windows 95 with IE 5... 8-bit color... even a smattering of the OS's that really shouldn't be used, like Windows CE and the iPod browsers...

you have to think about who you are targeting.

 

Take a web design portfolio site (not a hire me site just a show off work site) for example, people most likely to look at this site are designers. Designers are more likely to have a higher resolution than other people, they are also more likely to use a browser other than IE.

 

Then compare this with the sort of people who will use google...a lot higher traffic for one, and because google is a lot more generalised and not targeted an one market then stats will be a lot closer together percentage wise. This is due to everyone finding a use for google.

 

Chances are that general stats are taken from very high targeted sites that have no real target, so they cover a lot of groups of people. So I never really pay attention to anything that generalised stats tell me and only pay attention to stas for that site.

 

Although I will admit that when designing fixed with sites I still design for 800*600 even if there is just a small percent that uses that resolution and I still make sure that my site will downgrade nicely on browsers...which normally means I will not use pngs, and will find a way around it if I need semi transparent bits. But that's just me and I like to design and develop for the largest possible market, as I can never predict if the stats will change and my majority turns out to be someone I never considered.

These two were taken from commercial sites, one of which being Sportsaver. They are not visited by designer types.

 

When I showed my "boss" the resolution stats, he saw it as a pretty good reason to change the width of the site on next redesign (a year or more away) to about 900 pixels wide. I might even make it variable width (from 750 to 1200) but I am not sure about this yet.

 

IMO stats are only ever good if you want to justify a point, and generally they can be bent to whatever answer you need. If it is a good stat just say "look at these" and if not then say "look at these, but they are for a hugely different market"

That's interesting.

 

In my opinion web desingers should not (always) try to make sites, which are working in every single browser in every resolution. Majority of people have larger resolution than 800x600 and newer browser than lynx 0.02 beta, and they want to see sites which use newer tecniques. That's why they have bought their new computer.

 

As Dizi said, we have to think who are visiting our sites. We shouldn't avoid using great new possibilities only because there is one or two users in our 1-million-visitors site, who are surfing with explorer 4.0 and 800x600.

i made my site for the resolution i use, at the beginning for the browser iam using... now it work on ie and ff... i got more visits from the UK then the US... i guess you all take few minutes to look at it

 

im agree with that part that designers are mostly using bigger resolution... i've made a poll on my da account about it i had few user using 1024x768, lot 1280x1024 and all the rest goes to higger resolution

These two were taken from commercial sites, one of which being Sportsaver. They are not visited by designer types.

I used a design site as an example as an example. Just because they are commercial sites doesn't mean that you are not targeting a certain audience. You are never going to get the same sort of percentages as a generalised site, unless you make the next big amazon....or another commercial site that does not really have a target in mind (or at least it is a lot broader than just dealing with sports wear). Sportsaver is not going to get people searching it looking for the latest action film, it has a target market of people wanting to buy sporting goods. Even though with everything there will be exceptions to a rule, you can normally design based on the majority of people that will visit that site, rather than the majority that visit amazon. As chances are that majority of Amazon will not be their to buy sporting goods

 

I never said stats were a bad thing, I simply said that a generalised stats will not help you as much as targeted stas will and that's why i when I can I will always follow the targeted stats. As lets face it generalised stats will be taking places like google and other very high traffic places to get a broader look at people that use the internet...so targeting the specific audience based on targeted stats, well that is miles better than just searching for internet usages stats that will have percentages closer together as every walk of life uses them and not just your targeted section. My opinion is getting generalised stats is an indication of the entire web, but not an indication of a targeted market.

 

 

I don't go as far as downgrading to IE4, I will make sure it works on IE6 and above as it has been proven to me through my stats collection that it is still worth As for 800*600 that's because I am stuck in the past.

There are statistics, statistics and damn lies so they say! It doesn't matter where you get stats from and the best you can do is treat them as a rough guide.

 

Have a look at http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/November/browser.php and compare them with the W3 ones.

 

I suppose the big question for designing is how many users might you be giving a negative experience? An example would be designing a page at 960px wide - how many users might get sideways scrolling? Can you live with that number and would if affect your site income/success?