SEO Step By Step Guide– 87. Why is cross browser compatibility important?

At one time Internet Explorer was the only browser that was monopolizing the internet browser industry. It was much easier then for the web designers and webmasters to build websites because they had to ensure that their websites worked well with this sole browser type. Coding one’s website was much simpler because it had to satisfy only the IE specifications. Today that is not the case there are so many browsers. People have walked out of the IE era and started trying other browsers more freely than ever. Most of us know only a few popular browser types such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Netscape, etc. Besides these, there are so many other browsers little known to many. Though we cannot run compatibility tests for over 30 browsers we should make sure to run compatibility tests with at least the top 6 browsers listed above.

Why is it important to run browser compatibility tests for our website? Since the internet users are not limited to IE anymore, we should make sure that our website is accessible to all visitors irrespective of the browser types that they use. If we do not take care of this aspect it will affect our visitor traffic rate and hence our website conversion rates.

At times, some of our website’s features may not work with all the browser types. This can frustrate the users who are using non-conventional browser types. Some times, they can be stuck with the payment page or in order form. All these will make your website users lose trust in your products and services end up buying your services and products from your competitors. You must take every step to avoid all such problems because as a webmaster, we know how difficult it is to get good rankings in search engines and after getting some decent search engine ranking, if our websites fail us due to cross browser compatibility issues that it will be an utter waste of time, money and energy. It will be the sure way to loss and failure of our business. So it is important that all our efforts get maximum benefit. The ultimate aim is to get more sales out of our website and the second last step to achieve that goal is retaining the visitor long enough in the website to realize a sale. If we fail in the second last step by not ensuring cross browser compatibility, we would have failed all the way from step one. We cannot therefore emphasize enough the importance of cross browser compatibility for a website to be successful. If you want to make sure that you get the best out of every visitor that visits your website, then you cannot do away with cross browsers compatibility tests.

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