Don’t think that what you are seeing is what everyone else is seeing

One of the most difficult things about building websites is getting it to look the same on all browsers. This task can be very challenging and frustrating. Before trying to achieve the impossible and making your website look great on every browser, you may want to look at your audience and your stats. Looking at stats is a great way to narrow down your list of browsers that you should support. If you haven’t done it already take a look at Google Analytics or Mint and start collecting statistics.

With the growing number of Apple fans out there one would think that Safari is quickly gaining ground, but the fact of the matter is that IE6 is still the number one browser out there. Here are the latest browser stats from w3counter as of October 10, 2007.

Screen resolution is another hot debate. Since more and more people have larger monitors shouldn’t we be increasing the width of our designs? Turns out that the most used screen resolution worldwide is 1024×768 but did you know that only 50% of users maximize their screen? Before you start making designs that are 1000px wide, you might want to keep that number in mind. Here are the stats for screen resolution.

There are many other stats you should look at before designing. The location of your audience, are they using broadband, do they consist of a mostly technological crowd? If so, these should also be considered before you start.