One of the biggest problems we see with websites as we browse the web is they are just not compatible with multiple browsers. It should be your website developers responsibility to ensure browser compatibility but unfortunately this doesn’t happen all the time.
In most cases developers are not browser testing as it takes time and often you’ll need specific code to make it appear correctly in certain browsers. Instead, developers are just browser testing to the browser of the website owner. This is a big mistake, especially as the usage of the Internet increases and people start to choose more diverse browsers.
Let me give you an example, recently a client asked for us to develop a website on a very specific code base. The code base was only compatible with HTML5 browsers which means that unless a visitor had upgraded to the latest browser (which many don’t) the website would not display.
This is a major problem when it comes to sales, conversion and search rankings as if your website isn’t compatible visitors can’t buy and search engines won’t rank you appropriately. It’s important to understand a search engine wants to present to it’s visitors sites that are compatible, functional and user friendly, so it’s your job to ensure your website meets these requirements.
How Do You Check Your Website For Browser Compatibility?
Now don’t worry, we’re not going to recommend that you download every single browser and all the back dated versions, there are easier ways. One of the best multi-browser testers is Adobe’s Browser Testing application which is currently available FREE of charge.
To use Adobe’s Browser Testing application all you need is an Adobe ID and you can log in and use its complete functionality. It allows you to test on multiple browsers and also check for other website optimization issues. Which means you don’t have to download multiple browsers for testing you can do it all via this application.
We strongly recommend you do this on all your websites and all pages of your website to ensure that the reason why you’re not getting great results isn’t a simple Browser Compatibility issue. You would be amazed at how many websites we’ve consulted on where this simple issue was losing traffic and income for the owner.
In fact we challenge you now, to go and use this tool to test your site and then come back and report how many issues you found in the comments. It would be great to see how many of our readers are facing this problem!
