Forum Moderators: DixonJones
i've got pretty good stats going back to 2002 and less good ones back to '99
ecommerce retail, customer base - middle aged homeowners.
according to my records not a single purchase has ever been made using a linux browser/ operating system.
i'm thinking about cloaking my pages to confuse some of my more savvy competitors who i think are surfing my site checking it out manually - i already block site rippers as best i can.
any potential downside foreseeable?
except a sudden upturn in household (or office) linux use whereby i'd loose sales.
Do you also ban people who don't drive your favourite brand of car, work at the wrong company, or use the wrong ISP?
Apart from that, I think your idea would be a bad business move.
Firstly, "Past performance is no indication of future results". Some of your customers may surf your site with Windows, but use Linux for other purposes, and they're likely to switch more tasks to Linux over time.
Secondly, bad talk about your site among Linux people may eventually also influence your desired target audience, even if they're not the same individuals.
Thirdly, how much does it actually cost you to serve a handful of web pages to Linux users? Was establishing those stats and posting here about it even worth the effort in comparison?
I'm a Lynx user, and not blind. I use it with a speech synthesys which allows me to listen to long articles.
It's true, however. Many Lynx users are visually deprived. Lynx supports cookies and HTTPS, so one can buy through it, provided the site be accessible.
For Linux users: you may consider them neglectible, but keep in mind that they generally are skilled techs with good salaries.
To ban them would be a mistake, as would be a mistake to ban Apple users, or Solaris users, or whatever group of users.
But maybe you have enough customers? You should tell your boss about it.
i haven't tested to see if the cart works for opera on linux but it certainly works for opera on windows because i use that myself and have done for several years.
actually the post was a little tongue in cheek, sorry if i offended anyone, but my point was that in "my" middle of the road internet retail store virtually every buying customer is using IE and that time spent developing for other browsers (in that sector) is perhaps not the best use of time.
... indeed my thought was that actually people using other browsers were not potential customers at all but rather looking at the site for other reasons (whatever they may be and quite possibly not to my benefit - doubtless there are exceptions)
surely everybody here takes at least some measures to protect against scrapers and people stealing their content to whack up sites with which to run adsense ads? i was thinking along those lines. (i know most of that is automated but people must do research)
a thought comes to mind that you can't cater for everybody in a regular b&m store why should we internet retailers think we can? or perhaps we can.
>>how much does it actually cost you to serve a handful of web pages to Linux users?
in bandwidth terms virtually nothing obviously
>>Was establishing those stats and posting here about it even worth the effort in comparison?
(that reads like a flame bird but i'll answer it in good faith)
... i don't analyse my stats to find out about linux users (or the browsers people use for that matter - i'm of the very simple layout, server-side validation, no javascript, no plugins required school of thought, i think it will work pretty much in all situations),
i'm only really interested in the path users take through the site, noticing what browsers visitors (appear) to use is just a throwaway by-product which i mentioned here (while i was taking a coffee break from doing other things) because it is valid to mention in a webmaster forum that none of my sales appear to come from linux users - maybe i shouldn't have mentioned the ban 'em bit, but i figured that would get more interest :)
ecommerce retail, customer base - middle aged homeowners.
Speaking as a middle-aged homeowner, I can tell you that I use MACs, Linux, and Win based browsers across a wide range of conditions -- at work, at home, Internet cafes, PDA.
If I find a site under one set of conditions that I want to buy from, I may action the transaction the next day (after checking other sites) and from a different machine and set-up.
Put any sort of barrier in my way and you've got to be one of the few completely indispensible sites on the web for me not to simply click somewhere else.
So, to complete your market research accurately, you need to establish what percentage of your purchasers are multi-browser users; and which browser they find your site with.
Anything else is speculation.
Under an advert a small adblock tab appears, click on it and delete out the url to the main domain then put a /* at the end of the url.
Every advert from that domain is banned from your browser forever.
People love it its really popular, and going to be the next big thing on the net.
in "my" middle of the road internet retail store virtually every buying customer is using IE
You mean their web browser is sending a user-agent identification string purporting to be "IE"?
Matt
good point, but if you had read what i said eg.
noticing what browsers visitors (appear) to use
you would see i had addressed that issue.
If I have to fake my http_user_agent or boot into XP to place an order at your site, I just don't bother.
There's plenty of other places to buy from...
In the meantime, they may switch between computers, etc. Thats a potential downside if you ban linux of course.
In reality, linux users account for something like 2-3% of the desktop market, so banning them probably won't make much impact.
But, what I dont understand is, why? What possible benefit do you see from disabling certain segments of the web browsing population. If you think somebody using linux is trying to rip off parts of your site, how hard would it be for them to use a different computer? If they really want to steal parts of your site, you might be able to hinder them, but cant stop them completely without shutting down the site.
If you do decide to try to disable linux, make sure you don't disable all the search engine robots at the same time, since many of them are run on linux.
