I remember the days (late 1990′s) when Netscape navigator ruled the web browser market, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was a joke. In a few short years, however, Microsoft dominated the market, wiping out Netscape, and taking over 90% of the browser share.

This domination continued even as new upstarts, like Opera, Safari (Mac) and Firefox entered the scene. However, users increasingly frustrated with Explorer, started testing out the alternatives. By 2007, when Google Chrome came on the scene, MS was steadily losing market share.

I noticed a shift over the years in development work as well. It used to be that anything I did “had to work / look right” on Internet Explorer. If it didn’t work so well on Firefox, or Safari, the client didn’t usually care. But over time, I noticed clients becoming more concerned about other browsers. In fact, now I have some clients who don’t care about IE, but focus on FF, Chrome, and Safari. Today I saw an article about this company (not a client) saved precious startup money by not supporting – IE – in any version.

So why the change? The fragmentation of the market really increased the need to standards compliance. This means that code should function and render the same on all browsers. For a long time, MS went their own way, forcing developers to deal with their implementation of javascript, html, and other web languages. They had the muscle to do it, because they owned the market. But now they are stuck – developers are increasingly frustrated with code that works everywhere but IE, and clients are starting to shrug their shoulders. Because IE’s market share is now in the minority down around 40%. With the rise of mobile browsers and devices, it’s more important that the site work across as many platforms as possible. It IE is the main / only outlier, so be it.

It’s interesting to see how the ground shifts over time – hopefully Microsoft will get in line with upcoming versions of IE – if not, they face going the way of Netscape, at least in the browser market.

In a recent usability study, users were asked to complete some normal tasks using mobile web sites.   Using standard smartphones, the users could complete 62% of the tasks assigned.  That seems reasonable for these small and slow devices…but I’d note two things:

1.  These were mobile web sites – designed specifically for users of these types of phones.  That says to me that we need to do a lot better with our mobile sites.  It also indicates that maybe smartphones are a little too small to use for everything.  Imagine if we did away with 8.5×11 inch paper and forced content to be communicated on 3×5 index cards?  It never happened, even though the “technology” was there.

2.  38% of tasks failed!  That’s a huge number if you are trying to sell something, or provide customers with information they need.

I’d also say that the future of the mobile web is very much a question mark.  Do all websites need to offer fully functional mobile counterparts, or some sort of hybrid?  Meaning that some functionality is available for a mobile site, but not everything.  It strikes me that the screen size is a bit limitation, and that people will realize that.  Perhaps future smartphones will provide some way to cast a virtual screen that’s larger, or something.  In the meantime, I think people will continue to use multiple devices and accept the limitations of each.

Here’s a nice article on SEO, which lists the “durable” seo elements to focus on for your website:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2111842/8-Durable-SEO-Elements

An interesting revelation from Google CEO Eric Schmidt – google changes their search algorithm a little bit each day.  EACH DAY!  So jumping onto the latest hot SEO tip may backfire.

I’d summarize this article as follows – make your site user friendly and provide great content.  That’s it.  Serve your constituency well, and the search engines will reward you.

Search engine optimization is all the rage these days – everyone once their site “optimized” for keywords, content, etc. to rank highly in all the major search engines (mostly Google, though).  I’ve noticed potentially disturbing trend among several of my clients, however.  I call it “SEO paralysis”.

Here’s how is goes.  Your website is ranked fairly well in the search engines, and you are getting decent traffic from searches.  However, your site has some problems.  Customers complain about the navigation, they have trouble finding your products, for instance.  Or maybe you want to re-organize the site a bit in a way that reflects your current business.

But wait – making changes to your site *might* cause your search engine ranking to drop…so you hesitate.  You want to make life easier for your site users, but not at the expense of organic traffic.  So the paralysis sets in.  You hold off on the changes, or make very small tweaks here and there, but don’t address the real problems.

So what to do?  Well, there’s no guarantee of search engine traffic.  Even if you don’t change your site, your traffic can fluctuate based on new competition, or changes made by the search engines themselves.  But, as a consultant, I generally shy away from these situations.  I don’t want to be blamed for any changes in search engine ranking – so when a client brings that up, I back away.  Even if I think the changes will ultimately help the site, I can’t guarantee what will happen to SEO in the short run.

My advice to website owners is this – Do the right things from an SEO perspective, but never put off fixing problems with your website due to SEO concerns.  The first priority should be making your site useable and valuable to your customers.  The organic traffic will follow.  Keep in mind, that search engines are incorporating new ways to “grade” websites – so if people coming to your site can’t find what they need, your site may suffer anyway.

Keep the end user in mind, and the rankings will take care of themselves.

Here’s a study by Jakob Nielson:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

This study is over a year old, but I think there are a few takeaways.  One is that the success rate of people with “touch” phones is 75%, which is pretty high.  Given that smartphones seem to be going more toward the touch screens, this bodes well for regular websites.  The other is that mobile users are highly “search” reliant – so search engine optimization efforts will continue to matter quite a bit.