We are in the process of redesigning our web site. “ We started with reviewing our analytics to see what people want and where we could improve.
I thought I would share some quick analysis with everyone. “ Typically these facts apply to 99% of our clients too, so these tips help.
- Speed Matters, Make your Site Fast: Getting rid of 500KB of info yesterday lowered the bounce by 10% in one day. “ Make sure your web site loads quickly on the home page and any extraneous data is not included.
- Make Non-Javascript Friendly Pages Too : 12% of our users don’t have JS. “ Since JS is used a lot these days, make sure your pages degrade nicely; meaning that JavaScript elements also have a non-JS version too.
- Big Monitors Rule, so Design Large: Only 1.5% of our users have 800 x 600. It is old news that you should not design for an 800 x 600 layout. “ However, what is new is that everyone has a large monitor. In fact, most have bigger than 1280px! “ Glad we are not going blind. Unfortunately, 19% still have a 1024px monitor, so we will still need a 960px layout. “ However, in the future, I can easily see going to a 1100+ px layout.
- Mobile, Perhaps Not Needed for Small Biz Sites . . . Yet: I know mobile is the future. “ I love mobile sites when I am on my iPhone. “ But based on our stats, I can’t justify spending a lot of time designing an iPhone version and mobile version for our own site. “ Why? “ Only 138 visits come in from mobile. “ When compared with 14,388 visits that is less than a percent of our total visits. Almost all our mobile visits are iPhone and iPad users too, which display PaperStreet.com very nicely. “ Now, I know this will increase in the future, but for 2010 redesign, we will focus on our core site. “ Instead, focus on creating a light weight site that loads quickly on all platforms.
- Dial-Up, Who?: Only 1% are on dial-up connection. Not sure who those people are? “ I just thought it was interesting that 1% were still on dial-up. “ I do believe some mobile speeds are like dial-up, so you should design light weight apps.
- Browsers, Firefox Dominates, but Chrome is catching on too:” Firefox is at 45%, IE at 35%, Chrome at 9%, Safari at 7%. Nice job Mozilla.
Want more analysis on your site? “ Give us a comment or contact and we would be happy to assist in running some analysis on your site.