As the end of August approaches, jewelers are starting to think more about their holiday planning and marketing. Hopefully this includes online marketing.I've once again tapped into my tracking resources to see the latest popular web browsers people are using to visit jewelry websites. The table below shows the statistics from the last four times I provided these results as well as the latest measurements taken on August 18, 2013.
| Browser | Aug 2013 | July 2012 | May 2012 | Feb 2012 | Sept 2011 |
| Safari | 31.12% | 26.87% | 19.83% | 26.3% | 17.3% |
| Internet Explorer | 28.18% | 40.34% | 38.18% | 38.5% | 48.7% |
| Chrome | 17.42% | 11.12% | 12.01% | 12.1% | 12.4% |
| Firefox | 12.21% | 12.76% | 19.65% | 14.7% | 21.4% |
| Android Browser | 6.50% | 6.08% | 6.33% | 5.8% | - |
| Safari (in-app) | 2.96% | - | - | - | - |
| Amazon Silk | 0.50% | - | - | - | - |
| Mozilla Compatible Agent | 0.27% | 2.08% | 1.83% | - | - |
| IE with Chrome Frame | 0.25% | 0.19% | - | - | - |
| Opera | 0.17% | 0.25% | 0.88% | 0.5% | 0.3% |
| Opera Mini | 0.12% | 0.15% | 0.21% | - | - |
| BlackBerry | 0.13% | - | - | 0.1% | - |
Let me stress again that these are the popular measurements for the jewelry industry and the browsers that website users are using when they visit retail jeweler websites.
Safari certainly has taken the lead but that's only because of the iPhone and iPad users. I'll explain more about mobile usage statistics on Monday.
Internet Explorer, once the champion browser that beat the Netscape (Mozilla) browser, has lost more than 12% market share in the last 12 months. Internet Explorer has always enjoyed greater market share because it's the default browser in Microsoft Windows and less savvy users didn't know they had a choice.
Taking a close look at the numbers tells me that there's more going on here than just migration to other browsers types. Although you can attribute part of IE's decline to Chrome's gains, it looks more like desktop web usage is slowly being replaced by mobile device usage.
The Android Browser advanced only 0.42% over the last year. This number clearly supports my other research data that shows that a larger percentage of typical mobile website users own iPhones rather than Androids.
The Safari (in-app) designation appeared in my tracking on August 20, 2012 and over the last 12 months it's failed almost 3% of browser market share. Once again we see another hint at the popularity of the iPhone because this "in-app" designation refers to everyone using some other app on their smartphone to view a web page. This includes the Facebook app and the Google+ app, both of which will render a webpage from within the app without jumping out to the Safari browser.
Appearance of the Amazon Silk browser shows us that people are starting to use their Kindle Fire devices t browse the web. Looking back in my tracking I see that Silk first appeared on April 16, 2013. Although the Kindle devices have support web browsing for a while this it seems like the usability and convenience is finally good enough for jewelry buyers to use it.
I've kept the Opera browsers listed only because I've been tracking them since the beginning. You don't necessarily need to worry about it.
On the other hand, BlackBerry is really trying to make a comeback. There was a blip of BlackBerry in May 2012 but nothing in August 2012. Now it's making another appearance. Like IE, BlackBerry was once the undisputed world leader in mobile phones. It would take a lot to make them a serious player in mobile technology again but they would learn from all the others' mistakes and could take a stronger foothold in the future.
So what good is all this information and how do you use it?
This shows you what you need to consider when formulating a new design for your website. You can't simply focus on a single browser. You need to test your website design in all web browsers and you must stick to website standards instead of using fancy programming tricks that work in one browser but not others.
