Cross Browser Compatibility And Visitor Traffic

We can never emphasize enough about the importance of having an SEO friendly website built and about the importance of having a web designer who is conversant with the basic concepts of SEO. What we are going to discuss in this post is not necessarily an SEO concept but it certainly will affect the traffic to your website. It is about cross browser compatibility. When the internet was first introduced, there were not as many browsers as we have today so it when web designers built websites all that they had to check was to see whether the entire website worked well with Internet Explorer and once they confirmed that they are done. However today that is not the case, we have Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Opera, NetScape, Chrome, etc. Each web browser has its own specialty.

Though they have their own strong points, they responded differently to the programming and web design codes. Features that work in Internet Explorer sometimes do not work in FireFox and vice versa. This is applicable for all the other browsers too. So if you have signup section that works in one browser and does not work in another then you will be losing your website’s memberships and this can also mean loss of revenue. Not everyone uses Internet Explorer or FireFox or Chrome so users should be able to access your website and have a seamless functioning of all the features irrespective of the browser that they use.

It will not only affect your membership registrations, it will also on the long run affect the traffic to your website because people who are using NetScape or Opera would find that your website is not working with their browser and they will not know that your website is not functioning properly because of their browser type but all that they would conclude would be that your website is not accessible. Only a minor fraction of the website visitors will try to log into your website using a different browser. Otherwise, people normally use just a single browser that they are used to. Even if they come to know that your website works with other browsers, they will not take the trouble to download a new browser leaving their regular web browser.

So before you launch on to any optimization efforts you must make sure that your website is checked for cross browser compatibility. This should be a prerequisite for SEO and only when it is established that your website works well with all the browsers you must make any SEO efforts. Any oversight in this area can cost you huge web traffic depending on the popularity of the web browser that is having problem with your website. Even if your website’s SEO is done perfectly, you can easily lose out a certain percentage of visitors due to cross browser compatibility. So first things first, get a good web designer who will ensure that there are no cross browser compatibility issues.

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