A colleague has been bugging me about the fact that I haven’t made changes to the CSS on the site to handle IE7 better. There are a couple of visual issues under this new version (particularly with forms) but nothing that can’t be fixed and nothing that is getting in the way of people converting or completing activities on the site. Normally I’m pretty aggressive about being a cross-browser supporter, but this time I’m slower to react given the metrics I’ve seen on our site.
Over the last quarter, IE 7 accounts for less browser traffic than even Safari. IE7 (1.56%) vs. Safari (5.26%). Why bother when people are sticking (thus far) with IE6.
I’ve been watching the adoption trend on our site for IE7 since the beta release began through to the release of the final version. This year (2006), represented in the graph above, shows the slow increase in IE7 adoption by our site visitors (the bottom line in the graph). Trending this against WebSideStory’s Stat Market data in HBX (the top line in the graph) we can see that our adoption rate is less than the pace across the Internet. Based on the low numbers in relation to our traffic, we’re waiting before making changes.
What are you seeing on your site? Are you reacting to the new release of IE?
Update: We’ve since made the changes — with Microsoft pushing out the update the usage numbers have spiked. Fortunately, not that many changes had to be made. IE7 CSS support is still not what it should be so be prepared to spend some time making tweaks or abandoning what works on other browsers.