What would you do if you found out one of your best sales people was randomly turning away 1 out of every 5 people? People who might have bought from you, but the salesperson turned them away because of their own prejudices.
Recently I was on a conference call with a client, and one of the services he was using. We were trying to work through some issues and during the discussion one of the issues that came up was that the services site was designed to run in Internet Explorer only.
I can understand if you are running an Intranet, inside a company where the browser is dictated by IT, but for a public website, you are essentially turning away 1 out of every 4 or 5 customers.
So I ask again could you imagine your bank, grocery store, or gas station or your store randomly turning away 1 out of every 5 customers because they drove a mini-van instead of a car to get to the store? Of course not! That salesperson should and probably would be fired for such foolishness!
Web browsers are like cars in many ways. They are the vehicle which your customer uses to get to your website. Just because Internet Explorer holds 80% of the market share, doesn’t mean that it should be the only browser you allow your customers to use. Your site should be designed to work with all modern browsers – and if it doesn’t you should fire your web designer.
(Note: names withheld to protect the guilty.)
About Walter Wimberly