If you’ve read our recent blog about Operating Systems and whether you should get your web developers to check for compliance against as many different standards as possible (so you don’t upset search engines such as Google by giving their customers a sub-par usability experience) then this blog should come as little surprise.

But is browser compatibility really that important?

Yes, it’s essential that your website renders well on the most popular browsers (i.e., the software you run to allow you to access the internet and view pages) and preferably view older versions. This is a relatively simple matter – check the site on computers running the relevant browser with its appropriate plug-ins to ensure it’s up to date. Again, this is also something you can quickly check yourself by downloading the relevant browser and preferably clearing any cache or history – pages stored shouldn’t easily carry over from one browser to another. Still, it’s best to be on the safe side when checking.

You are probably wondering which of the dominant browsers out there are. Again, this varies worldwide and will vary if you are viewing on a mobile phone or tablet computer versus a desktop model.

To be honest, it’s a while since we’ve checked out whose leading this market and the global results were more than something of a surprise – this data is compiled from roughly a 1% sample of the worlds websites and pages.

The market leader by a very long way and bucking thoroughly trends seen in things like the OS wars is Google Chrome, and globally, this browser enjoys almost 65% market share.

Next and second in the rankings due to its dominance in mobile phones is Apple, with its Safari browser racking up around 20% share.

In third place, we have what we still call Microsoft or MSN, which they call the browser Edge. Years ago, this was the pre-eminent software, so to now see just a 5% share of the browser wars is more than a little bit of a surprise. There is some notable variance, due to our early status as Internet pioneers the UK was wedded to Microsoft early on so they still have 10% here, in the USA, the share grows to a respectable 20%. Internet Explorer also has an extra 2% share, which could be added to boost Microsoft’s share.

In next place we have the Opera fast browser with 3% share. This is now Chinese-owned, which won’t be for everybody, but a real plus is that this browser has the added security of a free VPN that requires no log-in. The snag is that not all websites will load in Opera, and it isn’t great for telling you why. Opera defaults to the Google search engine and is based on Chrome. It isn’t a mass market browser being primarily used by geeks or those with security concerns, i.e., geeks again – this is not to disparage the skills or geeks or their valid concerns re security and privacy, but they will not necessarily be the niche most businesses are targeting overall.

My old favourite, Firefox, has a similar share (although more extensive on desktop computers), which leaves Samsung browser in last place (of the major players) with around 2% share.

Suppose you wonder why some old familiar names aren’t on the list. In that case, they don’t exist or have been taken over – we were looking for Freeserve (initially owned by Dixons and technically, this was an ISP, not a browser)….they sold out in 2000.
Netscape, an early pioneer, is long gone, as are Mosaic and Yahoo.

So what’s the Seriously Helpful outtake on all this?

It seems essential to get your web developers to specifically check out how your website performs in Google Chrome (desktop and Mobile) and Safari at an absolute minimum.

We suspect in the UK, many just use Safari, and, due to history and habit, Internet Explorer/ Edge or Firefox as alternatives, which isn’t sufficient.

If your developers are missing Chrome, then your business is potentially missing a trick – not a big one as all the main browsers should display most sites well. Still, in Google, every slight improvement helps, and as they own this one, it’s almost rude not to try accommodating them.

Stuart Haining
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