Fire your users

We fired our users. Better yet, we fired our potential users. Fired them before the first click. Yes, it was a massive preemptive strike against all those poor souls who use Internet Explorer.

Why Fire Internet Explorer Users

It’s not that we are unable to make the site available in Internet Explorer - it’s the principle of the matter. (keep reading — it’s continued down below)

In our carpool debate on this topic, we realized that banning IE-ers was something we had to do. It matched our message: Educate your coworkers, be a billboard for change, put your smack on. It’s what our customers believe in. It’s what we believe in. It is THE codesmack thing to do.

The Implementation

We had thought of doing a shirt making fun of Internet Explorer users for a while, but finalized it on the ride home that day. Then we spent a couple of hours finalizing the text on the page that would greet and disappoint unsuspecting IE-ers. We did a fine job except for one thing. People don’t read text on webpages. Looking at the heat map we saw these poor IE users trying to click all sorts of things to navigate away from the page. One IE user commented - “you only have one design?” So we put the message in a big yellow box - “IE Not Allowed”, added some headings and tried to get the point across. Here is the latest version of no IE Users allowed .

The Outcome

The results were definitely mixed as expected. Some users in the printfection.com forum were not impressed with our idea.

Seriously, you really want to cut off 68% of your potential market?

(Source: Last Month’s webstats for another site I run.
Totals: IE 68%, FF 23%, Other 9% - 44,973 visits)

They might be targeting a niche that has a propensity fro Firefox, but that same niche may just have parents / partners/ whatever that are looking for gifts for a programmer that might like IE because it is there.

It would be like opening a children’s clothing store and only having a 3 foot high door because the kids are our target market.

It seemed strange to me too, but I guess they’re catering to a specific niche market.

Personally, I think making your site work on anyone’s browser is one of the things that differentiate good designers from the ‘hacks’. Users should be able to use whatever they like to view your site, rather than being told to use or not to use something.

It’d be like a car maker telling everyone to buy a certain make of car so they don’t have to bother making anything else, or a supermarket that only has one brand of each product because they don’t see the point in carrying a range, etc.

Choice. Personal Preference. If you don’t provide it to the customer, they’ll just go elsewhere. No sweat.

Craziness. Absurd. What a waste of capitalism to throw away sales. There were also patronizing reminders that dealing with IE features wasn’t a difficult thing to do. Some told us they would not buy a shirt. The funny thing about this they probably would not have purchased a shirt anyway. In fact, I would be surprised if someone using IE bought a shirt. Our shirts are for the early adopters, the cutting edge. Programmers with foresight and a gut feel on things that need to change. Testing, Ruby, Rails, agile practices. These are things that good programmers we know believe in.

On the other hand, we have been embraced by those who espouse our cause. They laugh, chuckle, and admire the audacity. In the end it was an easy call to make. The call fits our target audience. It alienates a few in exchange for supporting the position held by our true potential customers. It helps promote our core concepts — the ones we believe in. It was the right thing to do. We Put Our Smack On. Do you?