Very generously, the producers of Shane Warne the Musical have given me access to their website stats for the purposes of this post.
All statistics below relate to the period from opening night – December 10, ’08 – until mid March ’09; during this period there were 25,377 visitors leaving 96,867 page impressions.
Of the site statistics I have access to; SWTM provides an example of a site with a cross-section of visitors, from multiple age groups and backgrounds. This is all conjecture on my behalf; Google Analytics is yet to report sex, age group, and economic circumstances (but they’re probably working on it).
Nationality/Origin
It’s not surprising that most of the visitors to the SWTM website were Australian, 86.81%; the UK, the runner up with 6.29%, followed by the USA at 2.12%. Broadband propagation and technology use varies between nations; this should be kept in mind when viewing the statistic below.
Screen Resolution
I’m ignoring screen height in this section, it may occasionally be a factor, while width is almost always a factor. The most common screen width for visitors to SWTM was 1280px (42.97%), followed closely by 1024px (33.11%). 800px wide can safely be ignored at 1.91%.
Connection Speed
Google ‘google analytics connection speed‘ and the indications are that GA calculates the connection speed based on IP address, rather than running a speed test. I’m not sure this is the best method of calculating a user’s bandwidth, but I’m not an expert on these matters. The connection speed of 68.43% of visitors to SWTM are listed as unknown, I think this is too high for these results to provide anything other than a general indication.
| Connection Speed | Visitors | % of site visits (excluding unknown) |
|---|---|---|
| DSL | 4,127 | 16.23% (51.40%) |
| T1 | 1,575 | 6.19% (19.62%) |
| Cable | 1,317 | 5.18% (16.40%) |
| Dialup | 959 | 3.77% (11.94%) |
Browsers
We’ve all paid the price of admission for one thing, browser stats; as web developers, we’re all hoping dearly that IE6 had less than one, five, ten percent, or, whatever your arbitrary threshold of market share is; unless that threshold is 25%, the actual stats are unlikely to make you happy:
| Browser and Version | Visitors | Percent of total site visits |
|---|---|---|
| Internet Explorer Total | 17,349 | 68.35% |
| – IE7 | 11,316 | 44.59% |
| – IE6 | 5,909 | 23.28% |
| Firefox Total | 5,258 | 20.72% |
| – FF3 | 4,418 | 17.40% |
| – FF2 | 764 | 3.01% |
| Safari Total | 2,378 | 9.37% |
| Chrome Total | 257 | 1.01% |
They are the raw stats, I’ve not interpreted them in any way. I can’t imagine developing the Shane Warne the Musical site – I didn’t – and telling the producer that almost 1/4 of their visitors will be unable to get beyond the first page.
Elsewhere on this blog, commenters suggest demonstrating how much it cost to support IE6. It appears, and this is an interpretation, it’s worth just under 25% of the total development fee (or an additional 1/3 on top of the standards development). I hate saying this for two reasons a) the risk I’ll be branded an IE6 apologist, and, b) I hate developing for IE6 as much as the next person.
The high price tag for IE6 development does not rule out demonstrating the cost of development to your clients, if anything, it underlines the financial benefits of upgrading. Should you choose to go down this path, the difference between the worth and the cost of fully supporting IE6 may be a suitable starting point.
The Sydney season of Shane Warne the Musical opens at the Enmore Theatre on May 15, tickets from Ticketek. Disclosure: I’ve spent a lot of time around the inbreed mess that is the Melbourne comedy scene; the producers (Token Events) are clients of mine, and many of the staff are friends too.