Lies, Damned Lies and Browser Statistics

I love stats. I spend quite a bit of my job compiling and analysing statistics. As this is the first blog post of the year, I thought it would be fun to look back at the browser/visitor stats for people looking at my blog. Here are some of the highlights:

• 86% of visitors were new to the blog (not been running that long so to be expected).
• Over 2,000 unique visitors were recorded in 2011.
• 50% of visits originated from Europe, 20% from the States and 9% from India.
• Excluding any browser with less than 5% the three main browers (IE, Firefox and Chrome) all claimed pretty much exactly a third of all visitors. Chrome just edged it to the top spot.
• 85% of visitors were running Windows (60% running 7, 32% XP). 5% were on the move with Android (not surprising considering the main theme of my blog) the top mobile OS. The Xperia Arc was the most popular device to hit the site.
• The demise of Flash continues (not) with over 94% of visitors having the 'popular' plugin installed.
• 1280 x 1024 was the most popular resolution but this report shows the huge diversity in resolution choice.

These stats we derived thanks to Google Analytics. If you run a site and don't have a thorough stat collection and analysis service, then I recommend you take a look at it (and it is of course free).

Of course the best part of the statistics is what you do with them...