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2006 Website Browser Statistics - Year End Results 

Well another year is gone and here is the browser war roundup for the year of 2006. This year we saw the much anticipated IE 7 browser release and although they have taken some nice strides forward , and having it rollout in the Microsoft Update , there still is a lack of early adopters (although many of the IE 7 percentages below come from December of this year after the rollout).

As with last year's stats , Firefox continues to gain footing in the techy sector (as seen below from Site 1 & 6). IE's total market share has dropped from 85.58 to 72.54% and Firefox has moved from 10.55 to 22.67% over last year.

	Site 1	Site 2	Site 3	Site 4	Site 5	Site 6	Averages
MSIE 7.+	5.97%	6.09%	7.35%	3.45%	3.05%	5.98%	5.46%
MSIE 6.+	56.56%	77.21%	76.62%	88.48%	78.23%	46.07%	65.11%
MSIE 5.5 +	0.91%	1.12%	0.79%	0.71%	0.33%	0.23%	0.69%
MSIE 5.0+	2.78%	0.70%	0.22%	1.18%	0.13%	0.91%	1.28%
Firefox	29.88%	11.11%	8.55%	5.00%	14.26%	38.58%	22.67%
Safari	2.23%	3.07%	5.53%	0.63%	3.10%	6.75%	3.62%
Netscape	0.85%	0.50%	0.94%	0.94%	0.80%	0.31%	0.61%
Opera	0.81%	0.20%	0.01%	0.07%	0.10%	1.19%	0.57%

Averages are calculated based on the total aggregate page views from all sites to eliminate biases from sites with fewer page views.

I have created this checklist and have found it very helpful when trying to design a website. Keep in mind this design checklist assumes that you have your business idea and plan together and also that you have hosting and a domain name. Make sure you have done your research before you actually start building the site.

1. Site Map

• Create an outline of your pages.
• Develop the keywords, meta tags, and a rough draft for your content based on the page outline.

2. Site Design/Template

• Overall feel and look for the site.
• Keep it consistent throughout the site.

These are some places that you may be able to find some templates that might help you develop your site:

• Template Monster
• 4 Templates
  
• OpenSourceWebDesign
  
• Template Box
• Open Web Design

3. Create Pages

• Create all the pages first.
• Don’t add any content to the pages.
• Creating pages helps to organize navigation.

4. Meta Tags – Page Specific

• Once you have all the pages created and the navigation the way you want it, add your meta tags.

5. Add Products/Categories (If Applicable)

• Create all product categories keeping in mind that you need to make it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for.
• Add all of your products keeping in mind keywords when creating descriptions and adding meta tags when able to.

6. Page Content

• Add page content to all the pages that you have created.
• Doesn’t have to be a final draft, websites are always works in progress.
• Remember that your content should be based on the keywords that you have developed.

7. Add Images to Pages

• Add photos or images to any pages that you want to put them on.
• Remember to make sure they load quick.
• Remember all images on the internet are copyrighted no matter if they say they are so be careful. If you have to pay $1 for an image it’s worth it for protection.

Places you can look:

• www.istockphoto.com
• www.dreamstime.com
• www.yotophoto.com
• www.flickr.com
• www.sxc.hu
• www.creativecommons.org

• Search for images within the search engines.
• Take your own photos with you digital camera or scan some pictures in.

8. Connect Merchant Account (If Applicable)

• Make sure that your merchant account uses a compatible gateway with your shopping cart.
• Get your merchant account connected to your shopping cart so you will be ready to accept payments.

Merchant Account Options:

• Echo Merchant Account
• PayPal
• Google Checkout

9. Add Statistics

Add statistical tracking to your website so you can know from the beginning what is happening on your website.

• Google Analytics
• StatCounter
• SlimStat
• Crazy Egg
• Mint

10.Review, Finalize, and Test Your Site

• Review your site and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.
• Finalize your content to where you feel it is complete for now.
• Test your site to make sure it functions properly and that it is ready for busines/traffic.
• Have other people look over your site to see if they can spot anything you may have missed.

11.Market

• You are now ready to worry about marketing.

Keep in Mind

Keep in mind that every site is different so some of these steps may be a little different from one site to another. A blog will be different from an ecommerce site. Let me know if there is anything else you would add to the list that I may have missed.

So for personal and professional reasons I have been inspired to discuss the types of professionals that may be required to build and maintain an online business.

I would like to compare building and maintaining a site to automobile professionals. You have your specialists that can do certain things. You probably wouldn’t assume that the guy changing your oil or your tires can also give your car a new paint job and could also replace the engine would you? Also, cars are becoming very complicated and if the mechanic doesn’t have the right tools, the may be unable to diagnose what is wrong with your car or how to do things the way things are done anymore. Same things with a website. Rather than mechanics and the body work guys we have programmers and web designers.

The Body Guys of the Web

The body guys take car of the look and feel of the web site. These are your designers.

Often times they end up stripping the car down and often times have to dissect it in order to get things looking the way they need to. They aren’t necessarily building and manufacturing the parts, they just take out their special painting tools and extra accessories they have access to and make your site look good. If something goes wrong with how your car is working, you don’t go to the guy who painted it do you? That is what a designer is all about. They often times know minimal programming if you have a good designer. They will know things like CSS, HTML, XHTML, a little PHP, and maybe Javascript and some languages like that. Not all designers even know that much. So hopefully now you can understand why you would need a designer and what their job is.

The Mechanics

The mechanics or programmers make things work and they are very special people and often times do very special things.

Let look at the auto mechanic. You have the tire guy, the transmission guy, the engine guy, the suspension guy, the oil changer, and so on and so on. I think you get the point. Most of them have been trained to understand about everything, but most of them don’t do everything. That means some are better at some things than others. Heck the guy who changes your oil is usually still in high school. That is just maintenance on the car and probably one of the most important things, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to do it. So highering someone to maintain your site may not be too expensive.
We all know about how the mechanic can always find something wrong with your car and you bill usually can end up being a lot more than you intended. Programmers can be the same way, that’s why it’s important that you know what you want to have your site do and that you price things out. Design is on the surface, but functionality is in the programming and hidden in the backend.

Here are a few languages that programmers know:

1. PHP
2. ASP
3. Perl
4. MySQL
5. SQL
6. ASP.net
7. Ruby & Ruby on Rails
8. Ajax
9. Java
10. Javascript
11. HTML
12. XML
13. XHTML
14. CSS
15. C#
16. C
17. Python
18. VB.net

Those are just a few of the main languages. There is also the issue of Windows vs. Linux with hosting. You want to make sure your programmer is familiar with the environment of you host. Sometimes you’re better off finding a programmer then a host so that you can get the right programmer.

Conclusion

Remember that the designer makes things look good, and the programmer makes things function and work the way you intended them to work. Who you value the most depends on what type of an emphasis you have on your site.

If your site is strictly informational based, often times designers can used preprogrammed applications to design and setup your site for you. You may pay more for the design because they will need to implement the design into the program, but you will save a tremendous amount of money on programming.

If your site involves a shopping cart, you will find that the price of hosting and also setting up, designing, and programming the site will go up. A site that sells something and involves any type of transaction requires lots of security, lots of functionality, it needs to have a system that allows you to manage orders, and I’m sure there are other things that I am missing. Just remember the more you need your site to do, the more expensive getting it set up is going to be.

Open Source software can help alleviate the costs of setting up a site, but if you want to have all the programs look the same then it’s not a matter of one design and that’s it, it’s a matter of taking that one design and integrating it into each program. I have yet to see one template that is universal throughout the Open Source community. Even at that, if you set up the programs, then you are the programmer and you have to fix any problems that arise.

Let us know what type of experiences you have had by leaving comments. Let me know if you have any questions also by leaving a question in the comments area.

Subject: File upload progress meter for PHP 4, at last! Author: Manuel Lemos Age in days: 99 Summary: This post explains how to implement a upload progress meter for PHP sites, including those that still run PHP 4. It also explains how to use a new plug-in of the Form Generation and Validation class to show an upload progress bar and live upload statistics using AJAX COMET requests. The Forms Generation and Validation class is very important to the PHPClasses site since its beginning. This post tells about the story of the site and how this class motivated its creation.

Just another example of how realign/redesigning your website with SEO can increase revenue.

While us in the SEO industry already know this little tidbit, it was nice to see an article written in Business Week about how SEO and a properly designed website can increase revenues. The redesign and search engine optimization (SEO) increased her revenues by 45%. Here are a few of the good excerpts:

The biggest challenge for us has always been reaching new customers. Two years ago, we felt like we'd hit a plateau: 80% of our customers were in California, 20% were in other U.S. states, and we'd sold to only two overseas clients. I knew there was a bigger world out there, but I didn't know how to make them aware of our company.

That's when I decided to pay for a professional redesign of our Web site, which I had created myself, and have it optimized so it would show up prominently in online search results at places like Google.

Over the last 18 months, our customer demographics have completely changed and our revenues are up 45%. Our customer makeup is now 33% from California, 66% from other U.S. states, and we've done 55 international transactions.

I had to pick the right search engine optimization specialist and be willing to learn what they would do, and how I could help. If I had just hired somebody to optimize my site and then wiped my hands of it, I'm not sure how great the results would've been. She had to learn everything about my industry in order to do her job right, and I had to stay involved with the process...

There were a number of really good point brought up in the article.

1. She already had a site that she "had created herself", but it wasn't creating results. Too many people believe that web design requires no other skills than buying FrontPage. This couldn't be farther from the truth.
2. Redesign/Realign and SEO went hand in hand. Too many times sites that aren't built with an SEO perspective will never rank well. They are missing too many of the basics. Most will need major modifications to the underlying code besides the actual information that is presented.
3. Be involved. You know your industry. You should have a pretty good idea of the keywords and phrases that people use to find your product, and other keywords that you want people to find you under. (However, don't get caught up in trying to "read the label from inside the bottle". Accept ideas and suggestions from your web designer. You hired them for a reason.

Ran across this list and had to post it. Ever wonder when the pendulum is going to swing back the other way?  

• Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
• We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.
• As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
• We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.  Horrors!
• We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
• We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
• We would leave home in the morning and play all day.  No one was able to reach us all day.  No cell phones.  Unthinkable!
• We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.  We had friends!  We went outside and found them.  We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.
• We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.  They were accidents.  No one was to blame but us.  Remember accidents?
• Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.  Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
• Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.  Horrors!  Tests were not adjusted for any reason.
• Our actions were our own.  Consequences were expected.
• The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.  They actually sided with the law.  Imagine that!

Well, I'm glad I made it through those childhood years.

Ever wondered which Yahoo! service is the most popular, or if Google is just a one-trick pony? Find out in this article comparing the market share of Google and Yahoo! properties.