How Google Chrome is going to change your online marketing

In case you haven't heard - Google just launched a new web browser called Chrome.  Other than the fact that this is interesting from the perspective that Google is taking direct aim at Microsoft IE - what I'm most interested in is how is this going to affect my marketing efforts?

There are a few things I can think of

1. Testing web design on yet another browser
2. Effectiveness of online advertising with the introduction of "Private Browsing"
3. How this will affect interactive web parts that need flash, java, etc

Testing on yet another web browser
As most marketers know - when your designers create anything on the web, they have to test it against the major browsers since each browser renders html in slightly different ways.  Currently, I know we test our web properties in IE6, IE 7, FireFox 2 and FireFox 3.  Last week the public beta for IE8 came out - which we downloaded - only to find out our website doesn't render properly!  Now with the new Chrome browser comes yet another browser to test against. (Fortunately it seems Chrome shows our site as it is supposed to be viewed)

Assuming that Chrome will see a decent uptaking by the public, since it was created by Google, it seems that it should be part of our testing regimen. So now, every time we create something for ourselves or a client, we will be testing on IE 6, IE 7, IE 8, FF2, FF3 and Chrome...  How do you make sure your designers have access to all of these browsers to test against since installing a newer version is going to get rid of your old version?  Our solution is to create virtual PCs that have these different browser versions installed - keeping our actual computers clean - but not everyone has that option.

How much time and complexity do you think having all these browser types and versions out on the public domain is going to cost you?  How are you going to handle being able to test against them?

You can download and try Google Chrome for yourself here.

Effectiveness of online advertising with the introduction of "Private Browsing"
If you haven't heard of this feature yet, you will soon want to pay attention.  With the introduction of Chrome and IE8 (and through plug-ins for FireFox) there is a new way to use the browsers.  Basically this is a private mode that doesn't store your web history or any cookies.  That means that if your ads or your system uses cookies to track users and their behavior - it won't work.  Some believe that's one reason why Google came out with their own browser - so they weren't at Microsoft's mercy (75% of web users are on IE) to serve their ads.  This private mode will also block certain ads that need these cookies in order to be shown.


If any percentage of your audience starts taking advantage of these new features, then you could be losing out on valuable ad serving - of if you have a behavioral targeting platform - this could affect your ability to track user behavior.  I recommend keeping an eye on this to see how it could potentially affect your software marketing efforts.


You can read more about IE8's In Private feature here.

How this will affect interactive web parts that need flash, java, etc
 Not all browsers work the same.  This is well known.  IE uses ActiveX, FireFox uses Java, etc.  What most people don't know, however, is that each browser handles things like Flash and javascript differently.  And based on the browser a user is on, your site could work flawlessly or it could cause the browser, or worse - the whole computer to crash.  It's been shown that viewing flash in FireFox can eat up all your system resources - even if you have several tabs open and aren't actually viewing the pages.  Some initial tests of Chrome have shown that it doesn't handle Flash or javascript so well.
  
So another thing to watch out for when integrating these interactive pieces into  your web site or your online marketing - make sure it's designed to work with the different web browsers.  Test the performance.  It could save you a headache in the long run.  You may want to offer different experiences for users on different browsers.

So what do you think? Will Chrome help you or cause you headaches?