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If you’re planning an update to your website and wondering if you still must optimize for IE 6 users the answer is probably an unfortunate YES. But, just to be certain, you can use Google Analytics to find out. Here’s how.

Login to your account and the pull up the profile you wish to check. Then, click on ‘Advanced Segments’ on the left side toolbar. Next, click ‘Create new custom segment’ at the top right. Then you’ll want to setup your parameters. In the first ‘dimension or metric’ box, add ‘Browser’, which is located under Dimensions – System. Then set the Value to ‘Internet Explorer’. You should leave ‘Condition’ set to ‘Matches exactly’. Afterwards, we’re going to skip down to ‘Add “and” statement’. Add the dimension ‘Browser Version’ to the ‘dimension or metric’ field. This one is also located under Dimension – System. This time we’re must set the ‘Condition’ to ‘Greater than or equal to’ and the Value to ‘6.0’.

Repeat this for another ‘and’ section only this time set the ‘Browser Version’ ‘Condition’ to ‘Less than’ and the Value to ‘7.0’. This way you cover all variations of IE 6. To verify that you’ve set this up correctly click the ‘Test Segment’ button. At the bottom you’ll see a line that says “…this segment matches XXX visit”. That number should be (much) lower than the line at the top of the screen that says “Out of a total of XXX visits…”. I’ve also included a graphic here to help you set this up. Be sure to click the ‘Save Segment’ button at the bottom when you’re done.

ie6-segment
Now lets try it out. Go back to your Dashboard and look for the ‘All Visits’ tab at the top right. Click that drop-down and select the segment you just created, leave the ‘All Visits’ Default Segment checked. You should now see a graph with 2 lines. One is all your traffic and the other is your IE6 traffic. Sift through your reports and then ask yourself if you could do without that traffic. Chances are you would rather not, especially if you run an ecommerce site. In my case, the traffic from IE6 users actually converts BETTER than all the other traffic as you can see in the report below.

conversion-rate
I’ve included a screenshot below that will show you how to create another segment that excludes IE users so that you can compare the groups against each other. Happy Reporting!

non-ie-users