Updated for 2012
Have you ever wondered how many 800 x 600 website viewers are still roaming the internet? More than you might think. More importantly, have you ever wondered about the monitor sizes of the viewers of your own site? The capability to discern your own user statistics (monitor sizes, and a lot more) is well within your grasp–in fact, you may already be missing it.
Browser/Monitor Sizes on the Internet Generally
It’s helpful to know the monitor dimensions of internet users generally; this lets you plan your designs to deliver a good experience to website visitors. W3Schools keeps a running tally of monitor sizes that visit its website but the statistics do not appear to account for mobile websites, so just remember that you need to account for mobile website visitors separately.
For 2012 (January through November) we see the following statistics on about 73,000 visitors:
A few details are worthy of mention. First, recent years have seen a proliferation of browser/monitor sizes. We see a nearly endless “long-tail” of single instances of very unusual browser sizes like 1795×1011 and 1540×963, just to name a few. These odd sizes make statistical analysis a little foggy. Generally though your top 10 or 15 monitor sizes are going to give you a fair sense of who’s visiting.
Now, just for reference, the statistics above are a far cry from what we reported in 2008:
| Screen Resolution | Visits | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |
1024×768 |
383 | 37.73% |
| 2. |
1280×800 |
147 | 14.48% |
| 3. |
1280×1024 |
114 | 11.23% |
| 4. |
1440×900 |
82 | 8.08% |
| 5. |
1680×1050 |
59 | 5.81% |
| 6. |
1280×768 |
50 | 4.93% |
| 7. |
1920×1200 |
42 | 4.14% |
| 8. |
800×600 |
38 | 3.74% |
| 9. |
1152×864 |
35 | 3.45% |
| 10. |
1280×720 |
11 | 1.08% |
Browser/Monitor Sizes of YOUR Website Visitors
Since we first wrote this post in 2008, Google Analytics has gone through a few redesigns–GA still offers the capability of showing your website visitors’ browser size, it’s just a little harder to find.
Instructions:
- Sign in to Google Analytics and click the “Standard Reporting” button on the top bar.
- On the left navigation, click “Audience” to expand sub-menu and then click “Technology” to expand sub-menu
- Click “Browser & OS”; the main window will now display a table showing browser statistics
- Click on “Secondary Dimension” at the top of the table as shown in the screenshot and scroll down to select “Screen Resolution”
- The table will then display your visitors’ monitor sizes.
Handy, huh? And don’t be surprised if you see a few 800 x 600 viewers still kicking around.
Hey,
This is if I had a site, yeah? What if I’m starting from scratch and is thinking of deciding on size (screen size/resolution) for my new website. Any place where I could get computer monitor sales statistics at least?
Check out this statistics page on w3scools.com
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp
Great article, Michael, on a typically overlooked topic. Critical to know, though, if you are building websites. Too many designers build around what they like and figure the visitors should accomodate their terrific new website design by going out and getting a bigger monitor. It just doesn’t work that way. Customers will use the hardware they have and if website owners don’t take that into account and design for a near worst case scenario on monitor size, resolution settings, etc., then it’s going to cost the website owner money – maybe a lot of it over the years.
One observation, though, you said these statistics come from W3Schools site visitors. Their visitors are typically going to be much more tech savvy and have more appropriate hardware than that used by across-the-board average web surfers and shoppers. It would be interesting to know these same statistics on searchers who visit Walmart, Target, Lowes and other such sites online, to get a real feel for what the average Joe is using out there. That would reveal more appropriate information on visitors to most sites, I bet. If these guys are tracking and using this info, though, we will most likely never be privvy to it as outsiders. Nice of 3CSchools to share their research.
I also find that the percent of surfers using the Google Chrome browser, is reported to be far higher for internet marketing sites and such, than what visitors to a local home improvement contractor’s site are using, for instance, as reported in Google Analytics.
Keep the great articles coming!
Carlin Stanton