StanShinn.com » Reference

Pasta, Meatballs and Credit Card Theft

Stan Shinn — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:36:33 +0000

People are always asking me if it is safe to use your credit card on the Internet. Finally a stat that shows where the REAL security threat resides:

The most common place for credit card information to be stolen is at a restaurant, according to Visa.

The credit card company, which constantly monitors cardholder transactions and data for fraud, has determined that 40 percent of all credit card theft occurs at dining locations — more than at any other type of merchant. source

What To Test?

Stan Shinn — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:03:21 +0000

Any site designer knows that testing your web site across multiple browsers is key. But not only has the market become very fragmented regarding the number of browser, but there are also several popular VERSIONS of browsers running around as well — each with their own quirks. Here are some current browser stats:

According to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp (January 2007)

IE7: 13.3%
IE6: 42.3%
Firefox: 31.0%
IE5: 3.0%
Safari: 1.7%
Mozilla: 1.5%
Opera: 1.5%

According to http://www.webreference.com/stats/browser.html (January 2007)

IE7: 13.12%
IE6: 31.37%
IE5: 1.71%
Firefox: 28.79%
Safari: 2.5%
Mozilla: 2.04%
Opera: 1.65%

Based on this, IE6 & 7, and Firefox should be in your testing regimen. If you further break down the Firefox users you’ll see that you should probably also test Firefox 1.5 & 2.0 since both have a strong following. On the other hand, the differences in standards support between Firefox 1.5 & 2.0 is not that great.

What do you think should be tested?

25% of US Uses IE7

Stan Shinn — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:30:33 +0000

After Internet Explorer 7.0 was released in October it has quickly climbed to claim a 25% market share in the US (largely due to it’s rollout via Windows Update). This makes it the second-most used after IE 6.0 in the United States, according to Microsoft’s IE Blog. Microsoft claims more than 100 million users have installed Internet Explorer 7.0. By contrast, Firefox’s U.S. market share was slightly below 16% six months ago (though it likely has increased since then).

Look for IE7’s market share to continue to increase with the retail launch of Windows Vista at the end of this month.

Halt to Hard Copy News Decline

Stan Shinn — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:57:23 +0000

A new Gallup study reveals a halt in the steady decline of those relying on newspapers for their news gathering.

Despite all of the publicity about people fleeing to the Web for their daily news diet, the Gallup survey found that twice as many still rely on newspapers: 44% daily vs. 22% daily for Internet use.

Firefox & Safari Gain Ground

Stan Shinn — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:50:19 +0000

Internet Explorer continues to lose ground:

The downward trend took Internet Explorer to its lowest market share percentage for the year at 79.64 percent. Internet Explorer’s loss turned into gains for Safari and Firefox. Safari ended the year at 4.24 percent, and Firefox came in at 14 percent. Source

When Vista launches, look for IE’s market share erosion to slow however.

Four seconds till abandonment

Stan Shinn — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:38:53 +0000

The research by Akamai reveals online users are less patient than ever. If a website takes longer than four seconds to load, users are likely to abandon it. 75% of those users would not return to websites that took more than four seconds to load. Read more

Is your page too ‘heavy’ and need help loading faster? Need to measure how your website performs? Try out NetMechanic to diagnose this and other ailments that can drag down the usability of your web site.

Increasing Comments Traffic

Stan Shinn — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:43:42 +0000

Want to increase comments on your web site article? Try making the feedback option more prominent. Take a look at how ZDNet formats their comments button (on the left below):

Also note they add this to the top of the article page. See it in action at ZDNet.

Yahoo’s Market Share Drops

Stan Shinn — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:21:41 +0000

Yahoo will have an 18% share of U.S. ad revenues for 2006. In 2005, Yahoo had a 19.4% market share. Source

Only 11 Percent Of Searchers Use One Word Queries

Stan Shinn — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:54:29 +0000

11.4 percent of searchers use one-word queries, two-word queries 28.9% leads the bunch, followed by three-word queries at 27.85%, four-word queries with 17.1%, five-word with 8.25% and six-word queries with 3.7%. Source

Google Will Own 25% Of 2006 Online Ad Revenue

Stan Shinn — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:08:11 +0000

An eMarketer.com report estimates that Google will account for twenty-five percent of all online ad revenue, continuing Google’s 65% YoY growth. Source