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:
[icon_list style=”check”]
- 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.
[/icon_list]
Handy, huh? And don’t be surprised if you see a few 800 x 600 viewers still kicking around.
