Technology

The Technology page shows you the machines behind your visitors: the devices they hold, the browsers they open, and the operating systems they run. It answers a practical question that shapes a lot of decisions: what should you actually test on and design for? You cannot check every possible setup, so this page tells you which ones your real audience uses, ranked from most common to least.

Think of it like knowing your customers before you stock a shop. If almost everyone who walks in is on a phone, you lay the shop out for phones first.

What you see

• A page title that reads “Technology”, with the date range shown nearby.
• Breakdowns of your visitors by the technology they use, each as a ranked list with the most common at the top:
  • Device type, such as phone, tablet, or desktop computer.
  • Browser, such as the common web browsers people use.
  • Operating system, such as the systems that run phones and computers.
• Numbers next to each row so you can see not just the order but the size of each group, usually as a share of your traffic.

How to read it

Read each list from the top, and pay most attention to the groups big enough to matter.

Here is a worked example. Say your device breakdown shows 70 percent phone, 25 percent desktop, and 5 percent tablet. That single fact should shape how you build: most of your visitors are on a small screen, so a design that only looks good on a wide monitor is failing most of your audience. Now look at the browser and operating-system lists the same way. If one older browser still makes up a meaningful share, it is worth testing on, even if it is not the newest.

The point is to spend your testing and design effort where your real people are, not where you assume they are. Teams often build on the setup they personally use and forget that their audience is different.

Customize it

• Set the date range. Use a longer range for a stable picture of your audience’s technology, since these shares change slowly.
• Scope to one website. If you track more than one site, view them separately, since different sites can attract very different audiences.
• Filter the rest of your data by a technology. Use the technology values as a filter to see how one group behaves. For example, narrow to phone visitors and check whether they convert as well as desktop visitors do.

Use cases

• Decide what to design for first. Read the device breakdown and let it set your priority. Action: if most visitors are on phones, make the phone experience your first concern on every important page.
• Know what to test on. Use the browser and operating-system lists to pick a realistic test set. Action: test on the setups that cover most of your audience rather than chasing every rare combination.
• Explain a drop that hits only some visitors. If a problem seems to affect only some people, filter by device or browser to see whether one group is affected. Action: if one browser shows the trouble, you have narrowed the cause to something specific to it.

Tips

• Design for your audience, not for your own device. The most common trap is building for the setup you personally use. Let the lists correct that.
• Small shares can still matter if they are valuable. A browser used by only a few percent of visitors might still be worth supporting if those visitors are important customers. Read the numbers with your business in mind.
• Use it as a filter, not just a report. The real power is narrowing your other reports to one device or browser to see whether that group behaves differently.
• Technology shifts slowly. You do not need to watch this daily. Check it now and then, and whenever you are about to make a big design or testing decision.