Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

>"In reality we've received exactly zero requests for IE support, angry or otherwise."

Why would someone bother contacting you when it appears that your site is broken? In other words, the call to action doesn't display technical competence - indeed it implies a level of technical incompetence which probably is not justified.

"We're really sorry, but Paydirt isn't playing nice with your browser" doesn't inspire confidence in the product - it doesn't suggest a high level of customer service, either. Would I really want to trust something as critical as invoicing to this company?

Furthermore, not supporting IE doesn't scale well. At 10,000 users 1.6% is $1600 a month in revenue. At 100,000 it's nearly $200,000 a year in potential revenue - all for what is mostly a one time expense.

Finally, where does this leave room for expanding services such as letting my customer's see their project in real time?

I don't see a business case for it. I'm not saying that there isn't one - just that it hasn't be made.

1.6% is 1.6% no matter how big the number is...

Personally, if my app were making 12 MILLION DOLLARS a year I'd either a) not care about that $200k a year or b) I'd then have the resources to do something about it

If I were these guys I'd support Spanish and French long before I'd bother chasing that 1.6%, but no one is being critical of them not doing that.

Exactly. There are many ways to alienate potential users (missing languages, missing features, etc). In the early stages we've learned the importance of focussing on the biggest bottlenecks first.

If it is 1.6% of people clicking the call to action, then something meaningful may be concluded. If it is total traffic on the site (my understanding), it is a less meaningful number because the non-customer IE visits are being measured against recurring customer visits, i.e. first time visits are being compared to heavy users.

That's good point. Taken on board, and we'll improve the page to encourage IE users to let us know. It's very true that things might change which would require us to change our tack, but as a bootstrapped startup with a hundred things requiring attention, IE support has taken a back seat.

Putting a standard front end task in the back seat raises the question "what other corners were cut?" particularly on the backend.

If you are selling a game, I get it. It makes sense.

But this is B2B sales and you're asking me to trust you with client information and my sales data.

Just because I'm looking to replace Quicken or Quickbooks, doesn't mean I hate Microsoft, nor does it mean that I want my mom to jump through hoops every Thursday when she does my invoicing.

Not supporting IE9 (and probably 8) falsely segments your potential market.

You must also understand the costs of supporting IE, I think is bigger than the revenue of those 1.6%

Depends on the revenue obviously.

Depends on if you believe that 1.6% figure is an accurate representation of how much business they are losing out on by not supporting IE. I would wager that number is generated from bad data specifically caused by their decision not to support IE.

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