Losing sales because of Netscape 4.x incompatibility

Add to Cart link has spaces in it

[sun818]

I'm finding that because my "Add to Cart" link has spaces in them, Netscape 4.x users can not add items to the shopping. Netscape 4.x requires all spaces to be a plus ("+") instead. It is only one or two sales a month, but I am losing sales nonetheless. I will be converting over to a submit form button system for compatibility reasons. More HTML to render, but I think the tradeoff is worth it.

[Crazy_Fool]

hmmmm ..... global browser stats show only 1% of internet users use netscrap 4.x (and that figure is dropping) so you won't really be losing that many sales, if any at all.
[thecounter.com...]

but yes, converting spaces to + symbols will work. redirecting netscrap users to an IE download page might also work just as well - netscrap users will throw a sh*t f*t at being told to download a half-decent browser and they'll post your site URL in angry messages in forums everywhere ... and it's all a bit of free publicity for you ....

[victor]

Some interesting stats there.

Sites that work for IE.latest only may (on average) be turning away 10% of their business.

But global statistic hides wide standard deviations for industry sectors and specific websites. Some sectors may be 99.9% for IE.latest but others will still have 5-8% NN.old.

And 1% may be some people's profit margin. If Sun818 is losing $50 a sale, then fixing the code for NN is a no-brainer -- why throw-away over $1000 a year for the satisfaction of insulting their browser choice?

[gsx]

But if there are fifty shops that sell the same item. But only two support NS4, this means that they will share the 1% market share. If each shop got 100 sales per week, on average that would be 50x100=5000 sales per week total, meaning 50 NS4 sales - divide that by the two shops and you have 25 extra sales per week. Half the NS4 users will give up and telephone order or go to the shops, so you could be looking at an increase of maybe 12 orders per week on top of your 100. That would be an increase of about 12% in orders per week in this situation.

People who say NS4 is not to be supported are losing lots of sales because of this. It is a USP.

[tedster]

Ah, yes, market segments. I've got one client whose site still runs 9%-10% Netscape 4, and almost all of those are Macintosh.

[TallTroll]

Yup, one client of ours sells heavily into the academic sector, where Netscape is still strong (about 10% in the UK). We had to change the ecommerce system that we sold them on the strength of that fact, to better accomodate NN users.

Its all about making it as easy as possible for people to give you their money

[Crazy_Fool]

>>If Sun818 is losing $50 a sale, then fixing the code for
>>NN is a no-brainer -- why throw-away over $1000 a year

let's not forget that "fixing the code" also means fixing an entire site, not just the order form - that could take a great deal of time and could cost more than $1000 worth of your time. that same time could be spent working for the other 99% of users - maybe encouraging more sales, maybe a bit more promotion, maybe a bit more optimisation to gain another place or two in SERPS, maybe adding more products ......

and let's not forget that it may be $1000 a year *now*, but with the continued decline in netscape usage, it won't be $1000 a year in 12 months time .......

the benefit of the extra work involved in netscape 4 compatibility will only last a short period of time, maybe a year or so, but if you spend that same time working for the vast majority of users, you'll continue to benefit in 2 or 3 or 4 years time ...

of course, if your sales are higher, it might be worth that few days or few weeks work to pick up the extra 1% or so of netscape users ....

but IMO, it's better to build for the future, not for the past .... IMO, people should look carefully at where their time is best spent .....

[rpking]

Also it pays to look at the demographics of Netscape 4.x users.

We studied ours in some detail, and it turns out that we had higher than 1%, in fact at the time of the the study it was about 5%. (This figure has now dropped substantially).

However, when looking at their spending patterns it turns out that they spend 50% less than the average user. Why? Because most of our users who were still using Netscape 4.x didn't through choice - they were students on University networks (which we could tell via their IP addresses).

There is a high probability that these same users would be using IE when at home.

So you have to ask, would it have been worth our time investing in a user base that was not only falling in number, but also spent significantly less than other users that we could have developed for?

[gsx]

But your link should not have spaces in them... there is a further consideration: If it does not work on NS4, what about WebTV, Opera, Fresco, ArcWeb, Oregano or other web browsers that you have never heard of?

The market share of all these needs to be considered. I had a problem using a JavaScript shopping cart - sales dropped, month after month without fail. I eventually discovered the problem - Internet Exploder 6 would fail when running the JavaScript - even though IE5, NS4, NS6, Opera 5, Opera 6, Mozilla had no problem with the JavaScript. It is important not to think of customers as 'disabled' becuase they do not have the latest browser. I know lots of people with IE 5 and my logs show many people still have this - but we should not be forcing them to upgrade to a later version so that they can shop with us. Imagine a shop putting up a sign 'This shop has been optimised for electric wheelchair users. Manual wheelchair users are not permitted to buy from this store'. It would cause outrage, and rightly so. But when it comes to the internet we expect people to upgrade their browser so they can shop from us - but just like an electric wheelchair this costs more money for many people who have older machines that will not run later versions; they need to buy a new computer. Or think about htose who pay by the minute; they have to download a browser that can take an hour on a 56k modem, only to discover a security flaw or two and they have to repeat this procedure several times.

Your site should stick to the standards as closely as possible when designing a business (especially ecommerce) site.

[Reflect]

I might not make our sites pretty for NN4.x but it is functional. That is where I draw the end of my support for NN4.x.

Brian

[sun818]

CF said,

"fixing the code" also means fixing an entire site

The site pages are generated off a template file, so only one page needs to be changed, tested, and migrated. At most, one hour.

gsx said,

But your link should not have spaces in them

I pull the product title from the database which has spaces in it. Typically, I wouldn't care about compatibility, but I received e-mails within days of each from a nasa.gov and another from a .edu. One has to consider that a .edu can also be employees of an institution that have more money to spend.

Ok, I'm off to download Netscape 4.x :)