Strange thoughts and ponderings » Development

The User Journey & the PIEPP Purchase Decision Model

Dom Ebel — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:04:55 +0000

Ecommerce user journeys contain many phases where retailers can inluence outcomes, corresponding to phases within the purchase decision cycle. The PIEPP purchase decision cycle model is great at helping to explain the complexities of human decision-making when we buy things.

PIEPP stands for:

Problem recognition - Identifying a need, whether “real” or not.

Information search - The more complicated the object, or the higher its ticket price, the more the information is needed to make a purchase.

Evaluation of criteria - Assessing whether the product meets your needs - a conscious and unconscious process.

Purchase decision - Are there any barriers to stop you making the purchase?

Post-purchase evaluation - Did you make the right decision? Why should you come back?

As the user journey progresses and more factors come into play, the user will loop back and forwards between the various phases until either all of the barriers to purchase are removed (resulting in a successful completion), or a barrier prevents further progression and the journey comes to a stop.

An example user journey is shown below, broken down into individual steps with comments to describe the corresponding phases of the purchase decision cycle, and the requirements they present in the commercial environment.

An Example User Journey: Sean Upgrades his Router

Sean thinks his computer is a bit slow, especially when online.

["Problem Recognition" phase]

Reading internet articles on how to speed up connection performance, he realises that a faster router might improve his connection speed. He currently has a “wireless-G” router.

At the top of one of the articles he notices a display banner for a Linksys Wireless-N Gigabit router, and conciously reads it.

This shows the importance of correct message targeting, matching ad content to relevant placements.

Sean clicks on the banner and is taken to a product page, and learns that the product is a “gigabit” router that conforms to IEEE 802.11n-2009 standard (”wireless-N”).

["Information Search" phase]

Sean researches the IEEE 802.11n-2009 standard, and uses search engines to find product reviews and recommended products.

He identifies a basic list of requirements for his router, and creates a “requirements” checklist in his head that includes features, price, etc.

This demonstrates the necessity for search visibility and including content which addresses common questions and explains features and benefits.

["Evaluation" phase]

Sean visits a number of ecommerce stores to try and find products that match his criteria.

He finds that stores with conventional navigation make it more difficult to identify products by feature, whereas ecommerce stores with faceted search allow him to cut their inventory according to his criteria - enabling him to find the results he needs quicker and easier.

Consumers now expect the option of a faceted search in ecommerce stores, as it provides them with a flexible method of drilling-down and identifying the products they require in a much shorter time frame than conventional navigation.

Sean draws up a list of products that match the criteria on his checklist.

This highlights the importance of sales promotion, price sensitivity, USPs, benefit statements and differentiation.

As he starts to evaluate each of the products on his list, he finds that one of the products has a built-in firewall.

Sean now has an additional criterion to add to the list, and therefore loops back from the “Evaluation” phase to the “Information Search” phase.

["Information Search" phase]

Sean adds “Built-in Firewall” to his checklist.

["Evaluation" phase]

Sean re-checks his product shortlist to ensure all products still match the updated checklist, and removes any that now fail to meet all the criteria, including the new “firewall” criterion.

He whittles his shortlist down to a list of suitable products, including the original Linksys Wireless-N Gigabit router, and the equivalent Netgear product.

Sean uses search engines to find ecommerce stores offering best prices for each product.

As he checks each retailer, Sean notices that some of the retailers offer USPs such as free delivery.

With another criterion to add to his checklist, Sean loops back from the “Evaluation” phase to the “Information Search” phase

["Information Search" phase]

Sean adds the “Free Delivery” USP to the checklist.

["Evaluation" phase]

Sean re-evaluates his product list to ensure all products still match the updated checklist, and removes any retailers not offering free delivery.

Sean’s list now comprises of the original Linksys router and the equivalent Netgear product, and the ecommerce stores that offer free shipping for these products.

Sean decides he trusts Linksys more, and he identifies the Linksys as his final choice of product - even though it is marginally more expensive.

This is an irrational decision on Sean’s behalf, as it is based on “gut feel” rather than scientific evaluation. Humans make irrational decisions regularly, and advertising can help build affinity with a brand to help capitalise on this behavioural impulse.

Sean starts researching the retailers on his list for the best price, identifying a number of potential candidates. The cheapest price is for the product only, whereas the 2nd cheapest is only marginally more expensive, but has a free wireless-N-compatible wireless card.

["Purchase Decision" phase]

Sean identifies the 2nd cheapest option as the one offering the best value – but is aware that he is not a computer hardware expert, and is aware that he may encounter issues when setting it up.

Realising he needs a way of returning the item if there turns out to be a problem - Sean loops back from the “Purchase Decision” phase to the “Problem Recognition” phase.

["Problem Recognition" phase]

Sean realises that if he needs to ensure he can return the item if there is a problem, he needs to verify that the ecommerce store he buys from has a favourable returns policy.

["Information Search" phase]

He adds “Returns Policy” and “Wireless-N-compatible Wireless Card” to his checklist.

["Evaluation" phase]

Sean re-checks his retailer list and removes cheapest option – as it doesn’t come with a wireless card.

After more searching Sean finds a third retailer who offers the same ticket price, but with no free wireless card. This retailer does, however, offer a free customer support line.

Again, Seans research behaviour highlights the importance of data structuring to enable USPs to be easily identified.

Sean finds the returns policy, and satifies himself that he can return the item if there is a problem.

Having verified the returns policy, Sean has more “trust” in this retailer. The trust factor is one of the most important element of successful ecommerce, so it is vital to ensure that any issues which impact on your website’s trust factor are resolved.

He considers the higher price tag (once the wireless card is factored-in) is still reasonable, as it provides him with access to the customer support line – a service he previously did not have.

["Purchase Decision" phase]

So, confident that this ecommerce shop offers value for money and a trustworthy service, Sean tries to purchase the router - however, he finds he cannot, as the payment gateway does not accept his Diners Card.

The issue that Sean runs into while using the payment gateway illustrates the importance of improving the factors relating to user experience, in order to remove the barriers to the purchase decision - a process known as Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO).

Unable to purchase the router from the retailer offering the free customer service, Sean re-evaluates the original cheapest option – even though does not have support or a wireless card.

His initial choice of retailer denied him, Sean has looped back into the “Evaluation” phase in order to assess the next best option…

["Evaluation" phase]

He considers that the initial cost saving will offset the cost of wireless card, and support if needed.

Sean moves back into the “Purchase Decision” phase.

Sean feels the website has high trust factor, as it is a retailer he has heard of before, includes a clear returns policy, and uses a secure payment gateway.

He decides to purchase - this payment gateway accepts his Diners Card and he successfully completes the transaction, filling in his contact details and purchasing the product.

This again demonstrates the importance of Conversion Rate Optimisation in the “Purchase Decision” phase, removing any possible barriers to purchasing to provide the best possible user experience.

["Post Purchase Evaluation" phase]

After 3 weeks of happily using his new router, the online shop he bought it from sends a follow-up email, requesting he fill in a questionnaire. The email reads:

“Thank you for joining thousands of satisfied customers in purchasing the Linksys Wireless-N Gigabit router from us - voted the most popular router on the market by PC Flannel magazine in 2010. We would appreciate it if you could spend a couple of minutes filling in this questionnaire to help us choose future products”.

Sean reads the email, and sees the sentence “voted the most popular router on the market by PC Flannel magazine in 2010″.

He immediately feels validated in his purchase, knowing this was a award-winning product.

Sean’s “Post Sales Evaluation” phase of his user journey shows the importance of Customer Relations Management and using personalised email marketing to increase repeat purchase.

Sometimes customers will feel unsure about their purchase after buying it - the mental discomfort felt when two conflicting ideas are held simultaneously is known as “cognitive dissonance”.

In this case Sean needed the router, but has not necessarily bought it in the most cost-effective manner, as he has to buy a wireless card seperately.

However, when he finds out about the most-popular-router accolade, Sean feels vindicated and happier about his purchase - so by revealing this information, the retailer has removed any cognitive dissonance Sean may have felt about not purchasing the router/wireless-card bundle which would have worked out cheaper for him.

By resolving Seans cognitive dissonance, and because Sean has had a good purchasing experience with this retailer - even though it turned out more expensive in the long run - he is more likely to repeat-purchase from them because the purchasing experience itself was good.

Sean is now more likely to buy from this retailer again next time…

Summary

As can be seen from the imaginary scenario detailed above, even relatively simple-seeming tasks involve more complex user journeys than you might first imagine.

Highlighting the different phases of the purchase decision cycle model serves to emphasise the “looping” process that the user will inevitably cycle through; looping through individual phases many times over until all the barriers to purchase are removed, or the journey cannot progress any further.

By understanding more about the user’s intentions at that point in the user journey, we can assess the most appropriate method of interacting with that visitor and maximise our chances of a successful conclusion - an online purchase!

A Beginners Guide to XML

Matthew Pollard — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:11:50 +0000

XML stands for eXtensible Mark-up Language. You might not realise it but you are probably already using it:

XHTML, a mark-up language which many web pages are written in, is a form of XML
if you subscribe to any RSS feeds or use a feed reader, you are using XML
if you use Google, and have seen the drop down “suggestion box” when you type, you have seen XML at work

If you have heard of AJAX - which is probably one of the main features of Web 2.0 - the “X” in AJAX stands for XML.

AJAX is a technology which often uses XML

AJAX is a technology which enables a dialogue to be set up between a web page and a server, and allows page content to be dynamically modified without having to physically refresh and reload the page. The data that the page retrieves is normally sent as XML.

Elements of an XML Document

At the most basic level an XML file is just a text file – in a similar manner to an HTML document, an XML file can be created in a wide variety of text editors including “Notepad”.

XML tags are almost entirely customisable

An XML document is made up of tags which are almost entirely customisable, as long as the XML rules are followed. There are standard formats though - the above-mentioned XHTML and RSS both use standard formats as defined by their schemas or Document Type Definitions (DTD).

The Document Type Definitions (DTD)

A DTD is a schema written in the DTD language. In Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML) family mark-up languages, the DTD contains a set of mark-up declarations that define a document type - whether it might be:

HTML 4.01 strict (Contains all HTML elements and attributes, excluding presentational or deprecated elements [eg. font] and framesets)
XHTML 1.0 strict (a version of XHTML excluding elements marked as deprecated in the HTML 4.01 specification)
XHTML 1.0 transitional (a version including some presentational elements excluded from the strict version)
or something else

The XML document declares what DTD it uses via a reference within the mark-up - this is how a web browser know what type of HTML to expect and how a feed reader using a RSS document knows what to expect.

The DTD that an HTML or XHTML document refers to is defined at the beginning of the document’s code using the “doctype” declaration - the declaration looking something like this:

“http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd”>

The “doctype” declaration usually contains two pieces of information to identify the relevant DTD; a Formal Public Identifier (FPI) string [the first quoted segment] and a URL where the browser can find it.

The FPI can be broken down into two information snippets - known as the “owner identifier” and “text identifier” respectively - which are then further delimited by the “//” double-slash characters:

“[Registration Status]//[Owner]//[Class] [Description]//[Language]”

The flexibility of the FPI string is the crucial link required to provide the ability to set up your own DTD, or modify the existing DTDs to add the tags you have always wanted.

The ability to create DTDs confers the power to construct new XML formats

By using the “doctype” declaration in your XML code to refer to the location of your DTD, your customised tags would then be valid and execute in the correct manner.

It is this ability to create DTDs which XML documents can refer to, which confers the power to create customised tags and even complete new XML formats.

XML and the Document Object Model (DOM)

Much of the functionality we take for granted in today’s websites relies on something called the “DOM” - the Document Object Model.

The DOM is a representation of the web page as XML “nodes”, a node being an element or tag. If a node has children (i.e. more tags inside it), then the current node is the parent. You can also have siblings which are next to each other.

JavaScript manipulates the DOM - and therefore the page display - by finding a specified node and modifying it, but also has the ability to add new nodes or remove nodes.

This JavaScript functionality is crucial to the ability of AJAX to modify and update page content, dependant on the data received from the server - as it is this manipulation of the DOM which confers the ability to update content without refreshing the page.

XML Validation

XML documents must validate correctly to conform to the DTD

In order to conform to a DTD’s standards, XML mark-up should validate and be ‘well formed’.

Being valid means that it follows the schema and being well formed means that it is properly written as XML – tags must be closed and formatted correctly.

There is another reason why validating HTML is important, as validating page not only checks whether it is well formed or not but also provides a way to debug any problems that might occur within the page.

XML Formats

XML is used for many things where a standard way to transfer data over the internet is required. RSS, the ubiquitous format that pervades the internet, has already mentioned. However, there many different XML formats emerging - including the following examples:

XMLTV

XMLTV is a format that enables TV listings to be distributed over the internet to be used by various applications such as media centres or personal video recorders. The Radio Times provides an XMLTV feed of all its listings for personal use.

OpenDocument

OpenDocument is a format produced by the open source community as way to standardise and offer better inter operability between systems.

The format was originally created by OpenOffice.org the open source office suite but was adopted as a standard by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards which is a organisation a bit like the W3C and has since been adopted by Microsoft and is used as one of the formats in its Office 2007 suite.

There was some controversy about this as Microsoft was pushing their format, the Office Open XML format which is also an internationally recognised standard. Many open source advocates maintained that this format was biased in favour of Microsoft, but time will show the uptake numbers of each format.

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics is a format that allows a graphic to be broken down into XML. All web browsers support this format apart from Internet Explorer although Google do provide a plug-in for Internet Explorer to allow it to use SVG. It’s not just web browsers that use the format though main graphics applications support this format. SVG can been animated and interactive along similar lines to what you might expect from Adobe Flash

There are many other different kinds of XML and the chances are you have used it without realising so next time you see a file extension or application that includes an “X” in its name there is a good chance it stands for XML.

Beginner’s Guide to Top 10 HTML Tags

Matthew Pollard — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:19:52 +0000

Here is a quick run down we put together for those beginning their journey into HTML to quickly outline 10 of the most common tags and some info about them.

1. html

This is the key tag in html it wraps up all the other tags to create an HTML document. HTML actually stands for HyperText Markup Langauge. Tim Berners-Lee as part of his development of the world wide web is widely credited with inventing it (http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html). Even XHTML uses the HTML tag!

2. head

This tag defines the section of code where all meta tags go and where any other files required for the page are called from. For example, CSS style sheets and external JavaScript files are included here.

By including style sheets and JavaScript as external files this improves the performance of a site as these files are then cached in the users’ browser and don’t need to be downloaded again.

Meta tags were originally envisage to provide additional contextual data for documents (web pages), but piecemeal implementation from many web authors and abuse from search engines marketers has dulled the appetite for the provision and use of this data. Search engines ignore meta keyword data (Google has never analysed them) but do use meta description data to populate their snippet descriptions found on the search engine results pages (SERP).

3. body

The “body” wraps around all the visible content on a page.

4. title

The “title” tag is where the text that you see in the title bar of the browser is kept. This is one of the key tags in terms of search engine optimisation and the information architecture of your website. There is an article on title tag optimisation that goes into more detail about this.

The title content will be displayed as the clickable link if the page is displayed in the SERP - so creating a clear offering with an enticing page summary is essential to maximise click-through rates (CTR) from organic search listings

5. h1

H1 is meant to be the tag containing the page’s main headline; it is therefore the mother of all heading tags. In HTML there are 6 heading tags numbered from 1 to 6. They should be used hierarchically with the h1 coming first.

Creating relevant and descriptive headings helps with usability, commercial focus and marketing messages, accessibility, search engine optimisation.

6. div

The “div” tag is the main building block for most modern websites. Sites used to be built using the table tag and its children (tr – table row, td – table data or cell).

Tables were not meant to be used like this and when the cascading style sheet (CSS) was introduced it was advocated that tables should only be used for tabular data and not for web page layout/presentation. This had the advantages of making pages load faster and making the code more semantic.

Too many divs (coined “divitis”) is a common coding occurance. Good mark-up should be lean and avoid unnecessary divs, leaving the control to the more immediate semantic tags such as a paragraph

or list item

for example.

The advantage of this semantic use of HTML is that the container tags partially explain what is held in them for both users and automated information retrieval systems such as search engine spiders.

7. form

The “form” tag is a key element regarding communication for most websites. It allows information to be collected from the page to be sent to the web server. It usually contains input fields to collect the information.

8. a

The “a” tag is known as the anchor tag - the basic building block that links the internet together. Once you add a URL or URI (web address) to the ‘href’ (Hypertext Reference) attribute you get a hyperlink - the fundamental linking mechanism which defined the internet, and differentiated it from simple collections of documents.

In the web development world one of the on going debate concerning the anchor tag is whether you open a link a new window. One of the disadvantages of opening the link in a new window is that you lose the use of the back button and you desktop can become cluttered with windows.

New browsers enable you to open the link you are clicking on by right clicking it and choosing to open it in a tab or a new window. Therefore, if you open a new tab you can keep the original tab in view and if you want to go back to it you can just close the tab you are in.

With the advent of tabbed browsing most people say this should be up to the user.

9. img

The “img” tag allows us to embed images into a web page. With the introduction of CSS the number of images embedded using this tag can be reduced. Smaller images can be placed on the same file and manipulated using CSS (called sprites). The advantage is a single image is downloaded to the user’s browser, meaning faster page loads, less server requests and all functional website imagery is pre-cached in the user’s browser.

Using CSS the ‘style’ of the site can separated from the content of the site. This means that decorative images are added using the CSS rather than being embedded in the page.

10. noscript

The contents of the “noscript” tag is displayed if your browser does not support JavaScript.

JavaScript is a “client-side” (i.e. it runs on the users’ browser) scripting language which enables programmers to create extra functionality over-and-above HTML, and offers ways to enhance the user experience using newer technologies like AJAX.

AJAX is bandied around quite a lot but all it is, is a way for the web page to send and receive data from the server with out having to do a page refresh. Web pages should not rely on these kinds of technologies to work properly and should be usable without client-side scripting.

Fun with RSS

Dom Ebel — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:23:20 +0000

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This is a file format that uses XML that allow websites to publish information and for other websites or software applications to read it. RSS is a standard but has come to signify a number of other formats such as the Atom file format. RSS is usually referred to as a feed or web feed and is normally indicated by this icon:

RSS Basics

When browsing the internet the icon above will sometimes appear on your browser somewhere.

It appears next to the home button on Internet Explorer 7:

It appears in the address bar at the top of the browser in Firefox:

This means that the browser has found a feed on the site you are visiting and if you want you can subscribe to the feed and read any new content published in the feed.

In Internet Explorer 7 to subscribe to a feed:

1) Click on the orange icon. This should show you a list of available feeds.
2) From the list click on the feed you would like to subscribe to. This will show you a display of what the feed contains.
3) At the top of this page there should be a yellow box. In the yellow box there should be a ‘Subscribe to this feed’ link. If you click this it will add the feed to your favourite feeds. You can set up folders to organise you feeds much as you would when organising your bookmarks.

Once subscribed you can access your feeds by clicking on the ‘bookmarks star’ at the top right of the browser. If you view you list of feeds and you notice one that is bold this means that the feed has new content that you have not looked at yet.

To subscribe to a feed in Firefox when you see the orange icon in the address bar if you click on it, it will show you a short dropdown menu. This will display your subscription options. You can add the feed as a ‘live bookmark’ this is pretty much like a normal bookmark but when you click on it, it will display a list of the latest content published in the feed. With Firefox you can also use an extension to view the feed or use another application to read the feed.

Other Applications

Sage
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/77

Sage is a Firefox extension. Once you have installed Sage you access it from the tools menu. It splits the viewing panel into 3 areas. Top left is you list of feeds, underneath this appears a list content from your currently selected feed. In the main panel on the left the content from your currently selected feed is displayed along with an intro for each article.

RSSOwl
http://www.rssowl.org/

RSSOwl is a standalone feed reader application. This is a cross platform application and works on Windows, Macs and Linux. It has a three panel layout with the panel on the left displaying all your subscribed feeds. The top right hand panel displaying the content from your currently selected feed and the bottom panel display in the intro text from the article. You can also assign which browser you want any links you click on to open in. RSS has a good feature that allows you to enter a website address and automatically find any feeds on the site. This is good if you want keep up-to-date with a site and are not sure if it has any feeds.

Google Reader
http://www.google.com/reader

Google Reader is an online feed reader. If you have a Google account it is one of the features you can make of. Being an online feed reader Google have incorporated some social networking features. For instance you can share articles with friends via a web page or another RSS feed. You can also ‘Star’ articles to permanently keep a particular article. You can also tag articles.

Google Reader provides stats on what you have been reading or subscribing to. This allows you monitor your reading habits and if you are subscribed to a lot of feeds perhaps trim some of the ones that you aren’t reading so much. The reader also suggests sites you might like to subscribe to based on you current subscriptions.

What now?

Many sites have feeds and subscribing to them can make the business of keeping up to date with what’s going on in the world or in your areas of interest easier. Instead of randomly ‘googling’ for articles or information, if you find sites that have feeds you can subscribe to them and follow what is going on and access all these sources in one place.

Many news sites now have feeds including the BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times and many others which you can add to your reader. If you have a particular favourite there is a good chance it has a feed.

Social networking and RSS

Many social networking site use feeds to enable you to share information with other sites. There has been a new phenomenon called ‘lifestreaming’ where you gather together all you feeds that you create on sites like Delicious, Facebook, Twitter or Flickr and create a new feed that displays all your activity on these sites. This allows you to follow the activity of friends and colleagues by following one feed rather than subscribing to all one that appear on. Here are some links to some lifestreaming sites;

• Lifestream.fm - http://lifestream.fm
• Secondbrain - http://secondbrain.com/

Some social networks allow posting via mobile phone with that and GPS on mobile phones and with services like Fire Eagle it is possible for people to let their social networks know where they are in the world and what they are doing all the time.

Browser Developments – Netscape, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8

Dom Ebel — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:23:28 +0000

Over the last year we have witnessed some interesting developments in the wonderful world of web browsers. There have been a couple of new arrivals (Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome), one significant departure (Netscape Navigator) and ongoing updates to the usual suspects (Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and Firefox).

Netscape Navigator loses AOL support

In March 2008, AOL ceased supporting Netscape Navigator which it acquired in 1998. Originally launched in 1994 by the Mosaic Communications Corporation (later renamed Netscape Communications Corporation), Mosaic Netscape was the first multi-platform web browser to provide a consistent web-browsing experience, and remained the only serious competition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for several years.

Netscape went on to form the open source Mozilla project in 1998, releasing the Mozilla Application Suite which included the Gecko layout engine (the underlying rendering engine used by several current browsers, including Firefox). The final version of AOL’s Netscape, Netscape Navigator 9, was released in October 2007 and Netscape remains one of the most popular and well established browsers to date despite competition from the likes of Opera, Safari, Firefox, et al.

Internet Explorer 8 released

In August 2008, Microsoft released a second beta version of Internet Explorer 8. Unlike the initial beta release (in March), IE8 Beta 2 is a far more complete version that is shaping up to be the most standards-compliant browser Microsoft have produced to date.

Historically, the Internet Explorer rendering engine has been heavily criticised by the web-development community at large for not adhering properly to W3C web standards. Consequently, building websites for display in Internet Explorer has traditionally involved writing specific code to get around its numerous ‘features’ (AKA bugs).

In theory, IE8 will not require these browser-specific ‘hacks’ in order to make it consistent with other (more compliant) browsers such as Firefox or Safari.

IE8 will allow the developer to specify whether the website should be rendered in standards-compliant IE8 mode, or in the older IE7 mode, to render correctly

Unfortunately, despite (or rather because of) the improvements to the rendering engine, websites that currently employ IE6/IE7-specific ‘hacks’ to ensure consistency will render incorrectly in the new and improved version.

Microsoft’s answer to this is version targeting. By including an IE7 rendering mode in the IE8 browser it hopes to avoid ‘breaking’ the vast majority of websites by allowing the developer to specify whether the website should be rendered in standards-compliant IE8 mode, or in the older IE7 ‘almost standards mode’.

The release candidate for Internet Explorer 8 was released in January 2009, in preparation for the final release later in the year. Websites that employ IE-specific code and are likely to cause problems in IE8 will need to be prepared for release by the addition of meta-tags or an HTTP-header to invoke the IE7 compatibility mode.

Google Chrome browser released

Google have concentrated on speed, stability and security and delivered a simple, fast and streamlined browser

In September 2008, Google released a beta version of their new open-source web browser, Google Chrome. With the aim of producing a browser designed for the way we all use the web today, the developers at Google have concentrated on speed, stability and security and delivered a simple, fast and streamlined browser that is better equipped than most to cope with today’s heavy web-application use (social networking, shopping, uploading video, etc).

As Chrome uses the excellent WebKit rendering engine to display web pages (the same engine as Apple’s Safari browser), it is extremely easy to develop websites for and requires very little attention during the testing phase. The final stable version of Google Chrome was released for Windows XP and Vista in December 2008, and Linux and Mac OSX versions are currently in development.