In addition to chairing the lively Division of Design at NSCAD, I maintain a design consultancy where I oversee and sometimes produce web sites with topics ranging from academic to health-related. Google Analytics is a useful tool and although I don’t make use of it the same way web marketers do, I routinely look at the stats of my sites. The other day I wondered if certain sites attract users of certain browsers, and if there was any way to predict what browser they would be using by the site’s content?

I have a pretty good understanding about what kinds of people visit my sites, and for what reasons; I’ve been working with the Kurt Weill Foundation of Music since 1997 and Origin Biomed since 2001. Other sites are my own, including this blog.

I graphed statistics from the following websites:

• ericaldwinckle.info: This is a biographical site on Eric Aldwinckle, an official Canadian WWII war artist, illustrator and designer. Typical visitors to this site are looking for information on war artists. Some of these visitors are students, and others are interested in history or art. Average age is around 35 years.
• kwf.org: This is the official site of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, based in NYC. Like ericaldwinckle.info, visitors to this site are interested in the arts, and may range from students and music professionals to music lovers. Average age is around 35 years.
• this blog: Most of the google searches that hit this site are related to inquiries about the Arduino platform, but a significant proportion of visitors are interested in design or NSCAD University. Visitors to this site are similar to the two above, with the added Ardiuno ‘geek factor’. Average age is the same: 35 years.
• nscadlab.ca: The NSCAD Design Lab is a client-based projects and research lab. Visitors to this site are interested in NSCAD and Design. Average age of these visitors is around 35.
• mullercustom.com: This is a ‘boutique’ home renovation company in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Their clientele are homeowners, average age: 40.
• originbiomed.com: This is the corporate website for a natural health products company based here in Halifax. Their main product is Neuragen, which is used by diabetics and others who suffer from neuropathic pain. The average age of these visitors is around 60 years.
• wtsmed.com: We’ve worked with this Vermont-based natural health products company for 6 or 7 years. While I’ve not been involved in the design of the main website (the company founder is nervous about changing something that he believes works well), I’ve consulted on several sub-projects for this company, and I get to look at the stats. Typical visitors are naturopaths and other medical practitioners and the general public that is interested in maintaining good health. Average age is around 45 years.

I also included a ‘baseline’ measure from wikipedia which is a median of several reputable browser statistics sites (dotted brown line).

Some Observations

Considering visitor age, it appears that older visitors tend to use Internet Explorer, which younger visitors are more likely to prefer Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

In terms of interest, it looks like the more “artistic” visitors have switched from IE to Firefox, and visitors interested in this blog tend to be early adopters of the Chrome browser (presumably because of the ‘geek factor’ inherent in anything Google makes).

A PDF version of this chart is here.