The right information can help you make the right decisions in business. I enjoy the process of digesting all the data I track into actionable information for the jewelry industry.

For the last 4 years, I've been running reports on the most popular web browsers and mobile devices every 6 months or so. Although I have browser tracking data that extends back to 2003, the first time I was able to successfully report mobile device usage was in Fe...
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Every so often we like to take a broad look at all the various browsers customers are using to visit jewelry websites. Since the jWAG team also manages a web server farm of hundreds of jewelry websites, it's easy to run a general report and see what's happening.

The last time we checked up on web browser usage was September 12, 2011. Here's our finding from back then.

The percentage shown represents the customer usage of that web browser.

48.7% Internet Explorer
21.4% Firefox
17.3% Safari
12.4% Chrome
0.3% Opera

As of February 22, 2012, these are the new browser usage percentages for customers visiting jewelry websites:

38.5% Internet Explorer
26.3% Safari
14.7% Firefox
12.1% Chrome
5.8% Android Browser
0.5% Opera
0.1% BlackBerry9700

Internet Explorer continues to l...
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A few short years ago, changing your website meant you needed to hire a programmer. The expense was always high and many websites were never changed (practically abandoned) after they were initially created.

Today most, if not all, websites are created using various types of content management systems (CMS for short) that give you, the jewelry store owner, the power to edit your own website.

We understand that the technical stuff behind your website is of complete disinterest to you. You have diamonds to mount, rings to size, employees to worry about, and bills to pay. We know that you are probably a complete neophyte when it comes to web programming, and that's okay.

On the other hand, like a rolling stone through the desert that gathers a little dirt, over time you might have picked up a few little HTML programmi...
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HTML is the programming language for the web. Any web page you look at through a web browser needs to be presented using the Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML for short.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, HTML was pretty simple. In those days all you needed was a way to show words on a screen, some images, and create links from one page to another. The functionality of HTML quickly expanded and new web browser versions kept coming out to support the expansions.

HTML blossomed into different versions and by time early public awareness of the web came about in 1996, we were already using HTML version 3.2. That was quickly replaced by HTML 4 in April 1998.

The next version of HTML, version 5, promises to solve a lot of programming issues between proprietary web browser techniques and programming methods. One ...
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Design is one of the foremost concerns for your website. Trying to figure out the aesthetics that best please your customer is very difficult. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you personally like, because the customer will like something completely different.

You need to program your website so it best functions for your users.

Typical design concerns are:
* Width of the website. Do you want to be full screen or static width?
* Colors.
* What web browsers do you want it to work in? IE, Firefox and Safari are the big players.
* Do you want the website to work on a mobile device?
* Do you want to use a lot of images as part of the design?
* Do you want Flash? Remember Flash does not work in IE 64-bit, the standard browser for Windows 7.
* Do you want your website readable by users with visual impair...
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