{"id":340,"date":"2009-11-05T18:18:24","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T17:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/?p=340"},"modified":"2020-01-02T07:03:59","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T06:03:59","slug":"using-analytics-to-shape-your-browser-support-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/using-analytics-to-shape-your-browser-support-policy","title":{"rendered":"Using Analytics to shape your browser support policy."},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, when can I dump that bag of sh** ie6?<\/strong>
\n\"killie\"
\nI’m a web designer, not an SEO. So it took me a while to catch on to how Analytics might be helpful in my own work.<\/p>\n

But knowing and understanding the constraints you face is an important part of being a designer, right? And analytics gives us a useful window onto some of them.<\/p>\n

This is where analytics can help. Specifically, a relatively new feature of Analytics called ‘Advanced Segmentation’. A vexing question facing many web designers is “when can I dump that bag of sh** ie6?”. Well, using advanced segmentation, you can work that out fairly easily. Sadly, the answer for many of us is likely to be more nuanced that just dump it or lump it.<\/p>\n

I’m assuming here you have some basic understanding of analytics. Don’t worry, that’s all I have too. If you want to learn exactly how to make an advanced segment, you should checkout Google’s help articles<\/a> on the topic.<\/p>\n

And now, the graphs<\/h2>\n

All these stats were taken from our main ecommerce site cartridgesave<\/a>. It’s a pretty busy site, so it gives us some useful data to work with.<\/p>\n

For my purposes, I created a segment that tracks any browser with the name Internet Explorer and a version number that starts with ‘6.’ This should give us the ability to track that browser version through any Analytics report. Once you’ve created a few of these segments for ie7-8, Firefox 3 and so on, you can then generate a report like this:<\/p>\n

\"Internet

Internet explorer usage on cartridgesave.co.uk<\/p><\/div>\n

IE6 clearly lags in this instance; what was news to me is that IE8 is already beginning to overtake ie7. An encouraging sign, given how much better IE8 is from a development point of view, and how much faster ie8 adoption has been compared to the transition between ie6-7.<\/p>\n

Here is the same again, but swapping Firefox 3 for IE8.<\/p>\n

\"The

The same graph as before, but showing Firefox3 usage instead of IE8<\/p><\/div>\n

This information won’t necessarily solve the browser support debate, but it will hopefully lead to a more intelligent decision than before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, when can I dump that bag of sh** ie6? I’m a web designer, not an SEO. So it took me a while to catch on to how Analytics might be helpful in my own work. But knowing and understanding the constraints you face is an important part of being a designer, right? And analytics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-setfire-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.setfiremedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}