The internet has been around for quite a while now, but it really took off in the mid-1990’s, making it almost twenty years old for those of us who caught on the bandwagon from the get go. Since the globalization of the internet, there have been several key players in the field of web browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Google Chrome, among others. Each browser has its own user interface for the user to see the World Wide Web and use it to its fullest ability. Each browser also has its own features and quirks.
Over time, every browser must stay up to speed with the web to properly display web pages, images, videos or other content on the internet. So there are various versions of each browser spanning time and keeping up with internet trends. When a browser is updated, the previous versions soon becomes obsolete. Luckily, most savvy browsers will prompt you to update the software if an update is available, so that it is easier to stay up to speed with the latest technology.
Enter Internet Explorer.
For some reason, Internet Explorer is one of the most common browsers to occupy the workplace. For some other reason, Internet Explorer is also not kept as up-to-date with the latest versions compared to the other browsers. Yes, we understand that the IT department of any company has plenty to work on and a software update for every single version of a web browser for every single computer isn’t necessarily top priority. But, according to the Google Web Analytics from several of our B2B customers’ sites, IE 8 is the most popular browser, with a close second to IE 10 (as of this blog posting, IE 11 was the most current version).
Just to put the importance of browser version into perspective, IE 8 was released in March of 2009 – the computers you had back then are probably barely alive, so why is the browser surviving?
So how does this relate to branding and marketing? Your website. If you build your website with Orbit, we make it up to speed to fit the latest browsers (and make them compatible for several older browser versions too). And we have your website in development mode for several weeks to do testing on the various browsers and versions. But, on the rare occasion that our customers call us saying that their website looks funny, or it’s all catawampus, our first question is:
“What internet browser are you using and what version?”
A few instances have come back with answers like “IE 7” (released in October of 2007, aka 6 years old) or even earlier versions. We want your web to work well and be compatible with all machines and browsers, but at the same time, we don’t want to build your web with ancient technology.
So I guess at the end of all of this, we ask that you be good shepherds of technology and encourage that of others around you, your co-workers, your customers, your friends and family. Technology advances for a reason – to do things bigger, better and faster. If we are not keeping up with technology, we are selling ourselves short. Let’s progress together.