Ub News

Every morning when you pick up your two folded newspaper you get to see the top headlines on the first half fold. Right! That means the most important story gets the coverage on the front page. This same concept is applied to browsers too. Nowadays, there are many different sizes of monitors. Browsers are not always full screen and other things like toolbars occupy space. People view Websites very differently. Take for example; important information if placed at the bottom of the website will get missed by the viewers unless they scroll down. If the viewers do not scroll down then they would miss out on that information totally.

For example, as given in the official blog of Google, “On the download page for Google Earth, the install rate increased by 10% when we moved the “Download” button 100 pixels upward. We can attribute that increase to users who wanted to try out Google Earth, but didn’t see the button before.”

Google’s latest tool called Browser Size helps you understand how everyone sees your website. “Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it,” explains Google Official Blog.

Supposedly, if an essential button is in the 80% part it means that 20% of users have to scroll so as to see it. Google’s Official Blog further explains with an example, “If you’re a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience. We hope people will use this tool to make their websites better, in turn making the web better for everyone.”

Google Code Blog post will help you learn more about Browser Size.