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In the SEO industry we sometimes get too focused on designing a site with search engines in mind.  All too often we have to take a step back and say “what is the end user going to think of this?”

Sometimes the two conflict in that occasionally a user friendly design is not so search engine friendly, or a search engine friendly site seems too uninteresting for the average user.

But in between the user and the search engine there is one more aspect that some designers miss.  That is designing a site with the web browser in mind.  Not the actual user, but the software which renders the site.

In this article I look at some things to keep in mind when designing a browser friendly site.

If you’ve been reading my past articles you’ve seen me focus a lot on tools I like to use in my day to day SEO efforts.

Yesterday I touched on the Lynx browser for ensuring Googlebot compatibility.  And while it’s great to design a site to be search engine friendly, it’s also important to ensure your users are satisfied with their experience.

Therefore you need to design your site to be compatible with a variety of browsers, not just Internet Explorer.  Here is why:

Recent statistics show that Firefox usage is growing.

While it is true that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still has the lion’s share of the market, alternatives like Firefox, Opera and Netscape are becoming popular (oh yeah, Netscape ain’t dead yet :) ).

In fact, if you combine the share of the “other” browsers you’d see that they account for almost 1/4 of the total browser use with Firefox accounting for most of that at almost 20%.

Sure you could argue the statistics – some sites report that Firefox use is closer to 10% but regardless, alternative browsers are here to stay.  Therefore you need to code your site for maximum compatibility.

So what browsers should you test on?

Well, that depends on your audience.  Is it middle class housewives?  Or technical people?  I ask this because there seems to be a demographic evolving around the browser.

For example, more technology minded individuals seem to prefer Firefox.  In fact if you visit some of the popular tech blogs like Slashdot or Gizmodo where they report browser usage, you’d likely find that in many cases Firefox usage outweighs IE by 2 to 1 or more.

However if your site is an IVillage or an Amazon or an Ebay chances are the typical user prefers Internet Explorer, mostly because that’s what their computer came with and they are used to it.

That being said, I’d still recommend testing on at least 5 browsers:

Internet Explorer
Firefox
Opera
Netscape
Lynx

These are the ones most often used that account for 90% of all website users.

Sure you could try the site on different versions of the above browsers, but the latest versions should suffice.

That reminds me of a story:

There was one designer I remember working with who designed the website to be compatible with Netscape 3.0.

As you can imagine, Netscape 3.0 was very limited in it’s abilities.  Therefore there was some issues with some of the more modern techniques we suggested to the client.

When we approached the designer about using such a rigid browser for testing purposed she explained that it was done this way because the company president preferred NS 3.0 therefore they had to build the site to suit him.

I’ll let that sink in for a second.....

The obvious question was – why build a site for one person?  Granted it was the president, but you are willing to sacrifice a host of modern technologies to provide a website that probably 1 in every 10,000 or 100,0000 people use?  Where is the logic in that?

Conversely, I have (and still do) work with clients whose website is built in FrontPage and has Microsoft Elements that don’t play well with Firefox.  In fact you’ll find that some of Microsoft’s own more popular websites are not Firefox compatible.

It is the worst thing to load a website in Firefox and see lines through the nice images, or tables that don’t work properly, or text that doesn’t display properly because of the table design.

Sure these issues won’t affect your search engine rankings, but what kind of image do you present to your potential customers?  What do they think of your site if it doesn’t display properly?  Do you think they will associate the poor quality of your website to the type of customer service they are going to expect?

I’ll bet you they do.

Let me put it to you another way.  If you also own a brick and mortar shop, would you leave the shelves untidy, or would you make sure every product on every aisle is full and neatly displayed?  Would you let dirt and dust build up on your floor, or would you clean it every night?  What impact does poorly displayed product, or dirty fixtures have on your customer’s impressions of your business?

It is these same issues which will ultimately impact your site’s ability to sell, if it’s not coded to properly work across multiple browsers.

Don’t just settle for your designer’s words when he says “but it works in Internet Explorer and that’s what most people use” because while he’s essentially correct, his design could still be alienating much of your target audience.

Back to my statistics – would you want ¼ to 1/3 of your customers leave your store without even looking at anything?  Then why would you accept ¼ to 1/3 of your website’s traffic leaving because they are not happy with a design that doesn’t work in their browser?

So before you accept your designer’s excuse for the look and feel of a poor website remember that you pay his salary.  If he’s unwilling to build a site that’s compatible across multiple browsers then I’d start looking for one who is willing.

Therefore, if you want to ensure maximum exposure for your site, and you want to ensure that as many of your customers as possible have a good experience with your site, I would recommend downloading and installing all the browsers I listed above, and ensuring that your website(s) properly display in all of them.  And if not, fix them until they do.