Why IE8 Has Already Won The Browser Wars

There’s been a lot of hype, and even more anti-hype, the last couple of days about the recent release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). Along with the usual Microsoft bashing, there have been articles stating that IE8 won’t save Microsoft’s dwindling market share.

So lets recap the situation and revisit exactly why IE will continue to remain the majority choice out there for many years to come.

Firstly let’s look at the numbers. Yes IE’s market share has slipped over the last few years, mainly due to Firefox. Chrome and Opera get about a percentage point each, and certainly have their fans, but no serious competition. However, and this is important, IE’s share hasn’t slipped enough to make any difference in the past few years.

The reason’s simple, good old IE6. Now in modern terms IE6 is a pretty poor browser. No tabs, insufficient security, poor CSS standards compliance. Let’s look again at the numbers. The fact is that about the same number of people use IE6 (24%) as use FireFox 3 (26%).

This a a truly startling number, and even though numbers about Microsoft’s browser share slipping to Firefox over the last few years have been loudly publicized, this has not. What is says is that at least one in four people simply do not care about having a modern browser, they don’t see the need for tabs, add-ins and all the bells and whistles. All this despite Firefox being promoted on Google’s own homepage, full page ads in the New York Times and a huge groundswell of support. The fact is that after several years of Firefox leading IE in technology the same number stuck with IE6 as have bothered to move to Firefox.

IEs launch was quiet, it wasn’t announced loudly, and nothing was leaked to the press before hand. Understatement was the word of the day, for what is a major update to one of the world’s most used software applications. So why is that?

Vince Vizzaccaro of Net Applications quote that was reblogged all over the place simply does not apply to IE8. He said “If I were Microsoft, I would do something more on the Mozilla model. I’d be a lot more optimistic [about IE8's chances] if there was a large public announcement that it was available.”

Microsoft know something that Vince has failed to realize. They’ve already won. They didn’t need a big hoopla of a huge launch. The guys who switched to Firefox are very unlikely to ever switch back to IE, that would be like vegan’s ordering up a pastrami sandwich, it’s just not going to happen. A big launch would gain IE nothing, as they will slowly convert the user base through Windows Update and installations on new PCs. They’re also stemming the tide of new defectors to Firefox as the browser gap narrows. There just isn’t that much difference in browsers anymore, certainly when it comes to rendering HTML.

As software developers there are lessons here. Microsoft, after some mistakes in the past have come up with a solid and confident approach to slowly and systematically remain at the top. They’ve learnt the lessons of big promises that have left egg on their face in the past, and have come up with a solid applicaiton that’s clearly an improvement and gives users features that they actually want.

Form Filling Loses Over Half of your Customers

When it comes down to getting your cold hard cash from a customer there’s one trial that stands in the way. The endless pages of checkout forms which looses on average 59.8%. It’s a death march, it’s not pretty and, frankly, we all can do better.

The usual process goes something like this:
1. Choose the Software Product
2. Ask about Updates, CD, Download Service, Cross-sell items
3. Enter Personal Info
4. Enter Payment Option
5. Enter Shipping Details
6. Confirm
7. Checkout

That’s seven steps which can all throw errors and throw the customer out.

So what’s to be done about it? The knee-jerk approach of in-page or new window popups on abandonment simply don’t work and just infuriate customers. What’s needed is a little finesse and an eye to the future.

Streamlining the Process
I was talking to @algirhythm who advised me that streamlining pages for user’s eyes can have a vast improvement on the readability of pages, and can retain customers through the registration process.

So a quick quiz, which form do you think is the easiest for a customer to fill in, this:

or this:

The answer might surprise you, but based on eyeball tracking test software the second form is significantly easier. This is because the user just has to scan straight down, instead of left and right. Combine this with the user having to move the mouse, type, look away and find their credit card and you can see how this is true. This simple technique can help retain customers.

Clickability
Applying the ‘simple is beautiful’ mantra throughout the registration process it also makes sense for ‘OK’ buttons to be big and clickable, and ‘Cancel’ buttons to be simple text links.

Compare this:

To this:

In the first screenshot the ‘Cancel’ button is equally as important as the ‘Post’ button, but in the second it’s obvious where to click. The user does not have to think and less mistakes will be made. Again apply this thinking and it will subtly reinforce the ‘correct’ behavior that you want your customers to do during the checkout process, and hopefully you’ll get more sales.

No Reset
I’ve always had a loathing for the pointless ‘Reset’ button that’s sadly still used on some forms:

This is even worse than having a ‘Cancel’ button as when it’s clicked the user cannot use the browser’s ‘back’ button to get their information back. I’ve never seen a place where it should be used and I’d lobby to have it permanently dropped from the HTML spec!

Futureshock
In the future “Social networks will be like air”, or so says @charleneli at her recent SXSW presentation. We’ll we may be a few years off from having Google powering our sock draw, and Microsoft lightbulbs, but we are starting to get some tools that can help the death-march of registration screens and customer loss.

The web as it exists today is powered by ‘registrations’, and slowly we are starting to move to an ‘identity’ model. With services such as Facebook Connect the whole process of registration is side-stepped. Users don’t have to fill out the long signup form, they just have to use their existing “Identity”.

Of course this all relies on trust, so it remains to be seen if collectively we will trust services like this when integrated into e-commerce systems. Over the next few weeks and months we may find that we’re re-writing our shopping cart systems to use technology such as this, hopefully with at least one less hoop for the customer to jump through.

Add .ttf Fonts To Ubuntu’s OpenOffice

I have many TrueType (.ttf) fonts I used on my old Windows system which I wanted to use in Ubuntu. After a bit of investigating and after finding several different solutions relating to many different distros, I finally found one which worked. So here it is:

… Continue Reading

Unlocking Social Networks for Software Marketing

Social Networks really started to take off in 2004, with the meteoric rise of MySpace placing it squarely in , and hot on it’s heals the newcomer Facebook, soon outstripping MySpace’s presence on the top of the social networking heap. So as a software developer how can we make the most out of the intermixed web of social networks which continue to dominate the Internet?

I was reading a popular industry newsgroup and was surprised to see someone post that they were extremely proud that they had over 100 unanswered Facebook invitations in their inbox. Now I know that social networks have their down points, they can be seen to suck up time and reconnect you with people that you really don’t want to remember, but for software marketing they’re an important piece of the puzzle.

Status Updates

Whether it’s just you’re friends that you’re connected to, or business partners, using the status update feature of pretty much all social networking site is an easy, quick and effective way to get your message out.

You might be thinking that this does very little, however I’ve picked up contracts, and made business connections just through regularly updating my status.

Micro-Blogging

I recently attended Mashable’s NextUp NYC mixer event, which had a number of New York bloggers speak. One of the speakers, a hip writer for Gawker called blogging “old media”. I don’t think it was meant in total seriousness, but it is true that the blogging landscape is changing.

Micro-blogging is really the same thing as updating your status, and it’s catching on like wildfire. Sites such as Twitter, which is micro-blogging for text, and Tumblr, micro-blogging for images are seeing the same rise in popularity.

We recently set up a Twitter account for Bits Du Jour. What we did was take our existing RSS feed and automatically route it through to update Twitter using TwitterFeed. We’ve been getting about one signup a day, not bad at all as it requires zero maintenance work on our part.

If you’re already blogging then just by setting up Twitterfeed with your blog’s RSS feed you’ll be reaching more eyeballs.

Making Connections

The single most valuable social network site out there, other than of course SoftwareMarketingResource, is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is all about business connections, and after working in the New York web development world for nine years it’s amazing how interconnected it all is. LinkedIn lets you contact people that are up two three degrees of separation away from you. These days it’s rare that any of my new contacts are a ‘three’, they are almost always a ‘two’; that is, a friend of a friend. You won’t find customers on LinkedIn, but you can build partnerships.

Niche Media

With the release of Ning many more niche networks are starting up. As with all marketing half the battle is finding your audience. With a little digging you can find networks of people interested in software, or whatever niche your applications sit in. Whether it’s a Facebook group or another kind of specialist group there are often free tools that will let you blog to your group or post messages so you’re speaking direct to your target audience.

So even if you want to dismiss social networks as kid’s stuff, or want to run screaming at the sound of the name, social networks might be worth at least a little investment in your time.

Using the Software Marketing Resources

We hope you’ve been enjoying the re-design of Software Marketing Resource (SMR), and have been taking a look at some of the new features that we’ve created on the site. Today I wanted to talk a little about the Resources section of the site, and explain how you can use it to easily promote your software and speed up your software marketing efforts.

The SMR Resources section contains hundreds of links to websites that should be an integral part of your software marketing efforts. We’ve categorized them by page and category to make things easy, so lets have a look at the most useful ones.

Software Sites

By far the biggest list is the Software Sites list. Here’s why you can submit your software to a huge list of download sites and get featured on a wide variety of popular download websites. Many of these websites are marked as “PAD Enabled”, meaning that you can submit your software using a PAD file, which is an XML file that describes everything about your software. If you need to create a PAD file, or want to learn more then check out PAD Gen, a free application that will help do this.

Press Releases

Second stop on your list should be the Press Releases listing. This list has a wealth of sites that allow you to submit your press release and have it distributed all through the web. Some of these services are free, some are not, but even the free ones will help get your name out there.

User Groups

Marketing is all about getting to the users, and something that’s often overlooked in doing this is User Groups. Our listing has links to groups that may want to give out free copies of your software and spread the word about new releases and great tools. The old adage of “Think global, act local” can apply to software too.

Distributors

If you’re looking for Distributors then we have a listing for that too, so if you’re looking to get your software on the shelves then that’s a perfect place to start.

There’s many more pages to our Resources section, but these are probably the best palces to start, especially for new developers.

Nav Bar

When you click on a resource link you’ll see a top navigation bar pop up, looking something like this (click for a bigger image):

The nav-bar has has three dropdowns, allowing you to easily navigate through the resources. So, for example, if you’re submitting to Software Sites you can click through each one without ever having to return to the main page, which we hope will really speed up the process.

Star Ratings

In the nav-bar you’ll also see a star rating for each resource. Once you’re logged in you can rate each resource, giving it as many stars as you see fit. Your rating is shown in green, and the community’s rating is shown in blue, so that way you can see exactly what’s good and what’s not according to you and your peers.

Submit a Resource

The Resources section is also open for your submissions, so you can easily add in a URL of any site that’s appropriate or that isn’t on the list. Be sure to select the correct page and category otherwise it won’t pass our moderation.

We’re going to be adding new features to the resources section over the next few weeks and months, the next feature should be comments, but if you can think of anything else please let us know in the Site Suggestions section of our forum.