Web Browser Statistics
Web browsers are extremely important to both the web developer and the website owner. A browser is what displays your website to your visitors. If the website is not build in a manner to be compatible with the most commonly used browsers your website can be sunk. What does that mean to the website owner? It means that your conversion ratio will be low and your site will not be effective. Following is some interesting statistics on web browser usage:
Internet Explorer | FireFox |
Mozilla Suite |
Safari |
Opera |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
58.7% | 31.2% |
1.4% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
Details
The numbers presented here should not be taken as exacts but used as an acurate estimate to get a general sense of the habits on the surfers on the web. The type of browser used by the visitors to your website could have different ratios to that presented here. Depending on the website's target audience the preffered browser ratio presented above can be very different. You should install proper statistics software at the server level to gather specific information on the browser types used by the visitors to your website.
You should use the stats for your site, and remember that, if few people are using a particular browser, it may be that the browser is so obsolete that few use it, or it may be that you aren't adequately supporting the browser, and its users are going elsewhere.
More detailed Browser preference table for 2006/2007.
As mentioned above this should be used as a guide and may not reflect the specifics for your website.
| 2007 | IE7 | IE6 | IE5 | Firefox | Mozilla | Safari | Opera |
| February | 16.4% | 39.8% | 2.5% | 31.2% | 1.4% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
| January | 13.3% | 42.3% | 3.0% | 31.0% | 1.5% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
| 2006 | IE7 | IE6 | IE5 | Firefox | Mozilla | Netscape | Opera |
| December | 10.7% | 45.3% | 3.4% | 30.3% | 2.6% | 0.2% | 1.5% |
| November | 7.1% | 49.9% | 3.6% | 29.9% | 2.5% | 0.2% | 1.5% |
| October | 3.1% | 54.5% | 3.8% | 28.8% | 2.4% | 0.3% | 1.4% |
| September | 2.5% | 55.6% | 4.0% | 27.3% | 2.3% | 0.4% | 1.6% |
| August | 2.0% | 56.2% | 4.1% | 27.1% | 2.3% | 0.3% | 1.6% |
| July | 1.9% | 56.3% | 4.2% | 25.5% | 2.3% | 0.4% | 1.4% |
| June | 1.6% | 58.2% | 4.3% | 24.9% | 2.2% | 0.3% | 1.4% |
| May | 1.1% | 57.4% | 4.5% | 25.7% | 2.3% | 0.3% | 1.5% |
| April | 0.7% | 58.0% | 5.0% | 25.2% | 2.5% | 0.4% | 1.5% |
| March | 0.6% | 58.8% | 5.3% | 24.5% | 2.4% | 0.5% | 1.5% |
| February | 0.5% | 59.5% | 5.7% | 25.1% | 2.9% | 0.4% | 1.5% |
| January | 0.2% | 60.3% | 5.5% | 25.0% | 3.1% | 0.5% | 1.6% |
