Kogan.com's IE7 tax screen
Last week there was a big splash because Kogan.com, an Australian e-commerce site, decided to start charging an IE7 tax to customers using IE7. There reasoning? It costs them extra time and money to support the browser.
That argument could be made for so many things that you might as well declare your goods unsellable due to the impossible amount of taxes you would have to charge.
I hate supporting IE7 too (hell, I hate supporting *any* version of IE—let’s be honest, they’re all terrible). But you make a business decision to support it or not support it and, if you’re going to support it, you make a decision as to the level of support.
If his site was built using Progressive Enhancement he wouldn’t be spending money making it backwards compatible for IE7. Those users could have an ugly-but-serviceable experience at very little cost to Kogan. He should look into the Universal IE6 Stylesheet. It takes a single digit change to apply it to IE7 too.
To me this just looks like a marketing ploy. That shop received a ton of coverage, especially via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and probably received more traffic than it ever has before. Likely most of that traffic went straight to the blog and not to the store.
If Kogan doesn’t actually have IE7 customers, it’s a brilliant marketing ploy. If he does have IE7 customers, then it’s less brilliant. In general, your marketing campaign probably shouldn’t piss off an entire segment of your existing customer base.
I love a good joke as much as anybody and I can certainly see why the web design community took so much glee in what Kogan did, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The people using IE7 aren’t fighting the browser wars with us. They’re just trying to surf the web and go about their lives. Provide a simpler experience but don’t punish them like misbehaving children. Their not the ones acting like children in this equation.
