IE6 update notification has no effect

Posted on 03 December 2010 by Pete Duncanson Tweet

Recently we took a big step and added a notification bar to a site to try and encourage (or at least educate) IE6 users to consider updating their browsers.

We're keen to move forward but regular readers will know we also still think that  depending on circumstances, IE6 should still be catered for.

With that in mind, I hope it sets the scene a little and gives a bit of context to the following case that we've measured for 1 month through Google Analytics.

Adding a "soft" upgrade message

There are dozens of ways to add in an IE6 upgrade message, some subtle and helpful, others much more aggressive and unforgiving. With the article above in mind, we couldn't just kick IE6 users off the site. We had to be very careful because they still use the site and spend money - and their money is as good as anyone elses.

What we opted for then was a very "soft" upgrade notification that we show using a bit of conditional code and which could be dismissed at any time with a close button.

As the key aim is to try and inform users that updates are available but not restrict their opportunity to interact with the site, we made sure that once closed, the message disappeared for a month through the use of a simple cookie.

In addition to this, we also offered two links in our notification bar. The first one, to an information page we created listing the benefits of upgrading to a more modern browser and also a link direct to the Internet Explorer latest version page on the Microsoft website.

Two types of IE6 user

Our reasoning for this was pretty simple. IE6 users fall roughly into two categories. Those who don't know about modern browsers because they've had IE6 for years and those who are unable to upgrade for whatever reason - typically those in older corporate environments.

So, we're flogging a dead horse a little here. We need to advise but not be forceful - after all, if you give someone the tools and information to make a decision but then ignore their decision you're not helping much!

The impact? None at all

I'm taking a huge positive from our testing. We measured browser use as best we could using Analytics and found that basically adding a notification bar made little to no difference to the percentage of users accessing the site with IE6.

Spend remained constant from IE6 users and use of other browsers remained roughly the same.

We're not talking millions of visitors on IE6 but we are talking about a couple of  hundred per day so it's not an insignificant number over the course of a month.

A positive verdict

We're going to draw a very simple (and positive) verdict here...

IE6 users we tracked either don't want to or can't upgrade their browsers and putting a browser update message had no real impact either positively or negatively.

As such, we're going to keep the message because it's doing no harm and if it helps one person make an informed decision to upgrade their browser then that's a positive step and it's not impacting on traffic or sales as far as we can see!

Spending and traffic didn't fall and we're at least putting some useful information in front of these users without negative results.

Have you done similar?

Does your site have a similar message? Has it had an impact? Let us know!