When businesses measure their performance, even the little things can matter. The question is, how much is too little to make a difference?

The reason why I posted about web browser performance yesterday and just one platform not being enough, is because it isn’t. Especially today.

I don’t have anything against it, except that at any given moment, there are at least 30% of the web browsing people out there on another platform. The numbers are changing though.

Just 2 years ago Chrome had just about 40% of the market share…so it matters. Just not enough to ignore the other high performers.

It may not be worth optimizing a website’s performance (form filling, e-commerce, user interface etc) for a low user population platform, like Opera for example coming at just about 1% (according to the latest study in Computer World on September 1st.)*

Of course, 1% is pretty low, unless that 1% is equivalent to more than 1% of your revenue.

The aggregate of the non-Chrome browsers, Firefox, IE (including Edge) and Safari (if you must) at 29% of the share matters more to a business than the time to fix functionality. Especially if it impacts more than just the user experience. If your customer cannot complete a transaction…you are going to lose and lose big.

So, at least for the near term, consider how much is too little of your online business to ignore. At a normal, average 20% attrition rate, losing 30% – whether it is on top of that other number or including it – is too much to risk.

~ Dawn aka Hat Girl

PS *E-mail me if you want the data, but that isn’t the real point of the blog…