Pavel Lebedev

Pavel Lebedev | 2009-07-08

As I said in previous post, web analysts should be aware of the differences in usage patterns of most popular browsers to be able to understand behaviours exhibited by specific groups of visitors.

Here comes the illustration. Very simple analytics uncovers significant differences in composition of audiences that use different popular browsers. (No heavy analytics yet, although the heavy analytics of TrackSite reveals even more interesting facts, patterns and anomalies.)

First, historic introduction:

The version 7 of Internet Explorer was released in October 2006, the same month as Firefox 2.0 was released. Until then previous versions – IE6 and Firefox 1.5 – were ruling the world. Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008, about a year ago. And recently, the IE8 was released on March 19, 2009.

Needless to say that upgrade process have taken place within user base of each browser during that time. So, what is the result of those upgrade process? Lets see:

IE versions pie for 100 last days on July 8, 2009 (TrackSite Web Analytics):

Firefox versions pie for 100 last days on July 8, 2009 (TrackSite Web Analytics):

So, what we can see? The antiquated IE6 that was first released in 2001 and that was around before the above upgrade story begun in 2006 is still present in very "healthy" quantities – more than a quoter of all IE browsers. In striking contrast, the Firefox 1.5 that was around together with IE6 at the beginning of the upgrade story in 2006, has completely vanished, leaving only trace amounts behind, so Firefox's pie has only 2 slices versus 3 slices of IE pie.

Even more surprising! The share of Firefox 2, successor of vanished Firefox 1.5, is now 3 times smaller than that of ancient IE6. Would you believe this?

Furthermore, if we assume that recently released IE8 has absorbed only share occupied by IE7, then we can add together IE7 and IE8 to estimate the pre-IE8 share occupied by IE7 (because IE8 may be eating IE6 as well, the pre-IE8 share of IE7 may be somewhere in between of IE7 and IE7 + IE8), then that pre-IE8 share of IE7 accumulated over two and a half years (since October 2006) is only about 2/3 of the share gained by Firefox 3 just for one year.

All this suggests that upgrade rate (for whatever meaning of upgrade rate) among users is times higher for Firefox than that for IE.

In turn, this means that Firefox is (rightly) perceived by the market as much more innovative browser that brings more innovative features with every new release. As a result, it attracts more innovating users, who eagerly upgrade as soon as new version is released. And I can tell you that this is true, as far as I can see from my own personal experience. I have been using Firefox 3.5 beta long before the official release of Firefox 3.5. few days back.

Needless to say that Firefox users may exhibit entirely different behavioral patterns as far as web analytics is concerned. Innovating users of Firefox are more likely to become early adopters in the whatever product life cycle, they are likely to respond positively to innovative-style advertising messages, they are likely to prefer innovative products, etc. And this innovating behaviour is not the only distinctive feature of Firefox users, there are other as well, such as product customization bias, etc.

Check it yourself. For example, reporting TrackSite Segments based merely on browser name often reveals strikingly different behaviour of visitors and customers. Moreover, recently I was really puzzled by anomalous behaviour of Opera users, compared to visitors using any other browser, and spend a few hours doing research, building analytics and testing various hypothesis, until the mystery was resolved. Web analytics often turns puzzling and adventurous experience.

As a bottom line I would like simply reiterate what I have said before. To be able to understand behaviours exhibited by specific groups of visitors, web analysts and site owners should understand differences in usage patterns and composition of user audiences of most popular browsers. At least, they should expect this behaviours can be significantly different.

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Pavel Lebedev, web analytics expert/consultant (pavellebedeff yandex.ru)

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