Photo by Balakov
One of the mistakes I’ve made on this blog is not paying attention to the screen resolution used by visitors. Have you ever tried viewing your web site at different screen resolutions? You might be surprised at the results, especially if you use a fluid width theme like I do.
Not paying attention to screen resolutions is an easy mistake. If your website displays poorly at other resolutions you could be losing out on valuable traffic. First impressions count so don’t make the same mistake as me.
My PC at home uses a screen resolution of 1280×1024 and this blog displays fine at that resolution. Last week I visited my web site from a friend’s PC who uses 1024×768. I noticed that my blog didn’t display well at that resolution. Since I was using a fluid width theme I noticed the main body of each post was too narrow to read properly.
I had a look in Google Analytics and noticed the majority of visitors to this site use 1024×768. Not good news.
Assuming you use Google Analytics, you can discover what resolutions your visitors are using by accessing the Screen Resolutions option from the Visitors tab.
For the last month this is the breakdown of screen resolutions used by visitors to this site.
38% of my visitors are using a screen resolution of 1024×768. In real terms that works out at over 5000 visitors.
I wonder how many of those 5000 visitors were turned off due to my web site not displaying properly. Quite a few I imagine. This represented a lost opportunity to gain new readers.
So what have I done to fix this? I’ve started using a fixed width theme for starters. I’ve found this works better across a greater variety of screen resolutions, especially for web sites that use a lot of images like some of my articles do. There are more design improvements coming to this web site very soon so watch this space!
I recommend you try viewing your own web site at different resolutions. It could be time well spent if you spot some mistakes.
You may also like to read this related article:
Testing your web site with different browsers
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6 responses so far ↓
1 Gary Speer // Sep 6, 2007 at 1:19 am
Good stuff. I’m more of a “word guy” than a “techie guy,” and I really needed the input. You’ve given me something to think about and seek to implement in my blogs. I especially appreciated your quick tip about Google analytics. I have it on some sites, but honestly never knew anything about using it.
Keep up the good work!
2 If you blog, you’ll appreciate a site I just found a few minutes ago // Sep 6, 2007 at 1:35 am
[...] Through a bit of reading and clicking, I found the man’s website: Technical Itch. And, lo, what’s the first post I saw there? This one: “Don’t Make This Mistake With Your Blog.” [...]
3 Dean // Sep 6, 2007 at 7:10 am
I’m always learning new stuff about Google Analytics every week from reading other bloggers tips. It’s a great stats package and worth delving into the different options.
4 Amy // Sep 7, 2007 at 12:16 am
I don’t think much about the resolution, but I do try and keep 1024×768 the lowest. Anyone visiting my site is at least tech savvy enough for that.
5 Dean // Sep 7, 2007 at 7:11 am
Valid point Amy. I assume visitors use at least 1024×768 as the lowest resolution, although there are still a few running 800×600.
The vast majority though use much larger resolutions so providing 1024×768 looks OK I am happy with that. The larger resolutions will work fine too since I now use a fixed width theme.
6 mervandi // Sep 12, 2007 at 1:50 am
Good article. i think most of the pc user will prefer 1024×768 resolutions while the notebook owner will prefer 1080×1024. for different resolution we use, the fixed width theme will be fine.
but, i never thought that this resolution matter has something to do with losing visitors / traffic before. thanks.
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