Web Design – Browser Restrictions, Restrict Customers

It’s been a long time since I’ve bought groceries online. Now we have a baby I thought I’d give it another go to save having to go out through the rainy weather. We do most of our shopping at: Morrisons, Tesco and Asda. Morrisons don’t do online shopping so that gave the choice of Asda and Tesco.

I tried to buy online using the Asda website, I did this from my living room using my Linux Laptop and Firefox browser, only to find that I couldn’t actually select any items. The page told me to select from the list on the left, but there was no list. The site was most likely designed for Internet Explorer with no consideration for other users. I could have gone upstairs to my desktop computer and used Internet Explorer under windows, but why should I? Instead I just logged onto the Tesco website and placed my order there, where I didn’t suffer from discrimination about the browser I was using. I spent about £75 in that shop.

People may say that with so many different browsers why should they bother with other browsers. The fact is that if the sites are designed using the proper web standards then their is no reason to exclude these customers. The fact is that for these sites that don’t work in other browsers, they have used features that are not included in the webstandards and that are only supported by specific browsers.

Designing to the web standards will give a much greater chance of the site working in all browsers and hence not turn customers away.