Computer and Web Articles

You love your company’s website. I mean, you have it set as your homepage for crying out loud. And man does it look good!!

To you. That’s right – to you. Your website looks good to you.

It’s important to remember that the individual users within your site’s assortment of visitors all use various combinations of: a) monitor sizes, b) monitor resolutions, c) web browsers, d) web browser versions, and e) operating systems. This means that how you see your website is most likely not how many of your visitors see your website.

Depending on how your site was designed and coded, some of your visitors may be running into display issues such as content that appears cutoff at the edges, drop-down menus that don’t work, overlapping text, or text that pushes outside the box/area within which it should sit.

Display issues such as these often occur when people opt to build their own company websites; these sites are created to look great on the creators’ monitors – and without consideration to the varying needs of the sites’ visitors. On the other hand, it should go without saying that any professional web company worth its salt will ensure that no display issues exist prior to launching a new site.

Several online resources exist to help business owners see what their visitors see. A few of the better services I’m aware of include http://browserlab.adobe.com, www.litmusapp.com, and www.crossbrowsertesting.com. I recommend taking a look. The more knowledge you have about your website, the better your decisions about future site improvements will be.