2008 Trends and Metrics Report
Each April, we publish our annual “Trends and Metrics” snapshot. Welcome to this year’s update. We obtain these metrics from a variety of sources we have found to be the most reliable through the years. The referenced sources can be found at the bottom of this article.
 I. Screen Resolutions
Screen resolution is an indication of a user’s screen size. The most common screen size remains at 1024 x 768. This is the standard we use when creating a web site design. Using this as the standard means that for most people looking at your web site, the site will “fill up” the screen. For people surfing at higher resolutions (1280 being the next most common), your site will have a border around it with the web site typically centered in this border.
II. Web Browsers
| Internet Explorer |
74.69% |
| Firefox |
16.35% |
| Safari |
7.29% |
Internet Explorer holds onto it’s seat as The King of the browsers for now. IE7 is used the most; however, IE6 remains popular with a lot of users. Introduced in March of 2009, Internet Explorer version 8 has received early acclaim from reviewers and critics. As with any upgrade, I’d suggest waiting a few months before upgrading to ensure the first release issues are resolved.
Firefox has a significant presence, but continues to be more heavily used in design and technical communities. Mozilla’s Firefox is persistent in taking a chunk away from IE’s portion of the pie.
 III. Operating systems:
Windows retains the largest share of the operating systems used with 90% allocated and Macintosh bringing in 7%. Other operating systems represented in pie include iPod, iPhone, PlayStation and XBox.
IV. Connection Speeds
Several different high speed connection types are most frequently being used. The big take away from these numbers are that dial-up users now account for less than 3% of internet surfers.
V. Search Engine Market Share:
Google remains #1 in search by a large margin. The metrics below are as of December 2008 and are provided by Neilson Online Research.
| Google |
63% |
|
Yahoo |
17% |
| MSN |
10% |
|
AOL |
4% |
VI. Social Networking Market Share:
Social media sites are popping up like crazy! Here is a run down on the latest visits by site in January 2009. Stats courtesy compete.com - Click here to view chart.
VII. Demographics:
We are divided equally regarding gender use of the internet with 75% of men and women accessing the internet.
As typical, the younger age brackets have the highest internet use; however, again this year the fastest growing group getting online is seniors. (Source: pewinternet.org)
| 18-29 |
87% |
| 30-49 |
82% |
| 50-64 |
72% |
| 65+ |
41% |
Hope you have enjoyed getting a peek at the numbers behind “how we surf”. We’ll send an update again next April.
Malinda Pengelly
President
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