When talking about User-Agent, one commonly refers to a web browser that is giving the website information about the operating system and the browser it uses. By definition, User-Agent is a string that is there to identify the program that sent the request to a web server.
It is there to tell you very specific information about the software and even the hardware background of the request that came in. The information that is received normally includes the type of browser that is used, the operating system, web rendering engine, and the device that is used.
User Agent
User Agent has many uses in HTTP since it is the standard part of the web architecture. It does not truly provide any private information about individuals. But, it does provide valuable information that can help in analyzing the traffic that the website gets.
The information received from User Agent can be used for web optimization since you can gather data on what browsers are used to most to access your website. Also, you can tailor your website based on that. By checking the capabilities of the device, you can tailor the content that is sent back to the device.
There is one very important use of User Agent that is not discussed often, so we found it on us to show ways it can be used for digital advertising purposes. As the technology grows and progresses, digital marketing strategies should go with it and learn how to integrate everything that technology has to offer, in order to improve and modernize the industry.
Digital marketing purpose
The advertising sector has used targeting for quite some time now and using technology to improve targeting is on the rise. We have shown how you can use Geo reporting to understand market share, and in that way, by knowing the geographical location of users, to know how to expand, reinforce or subtract your digital marketing strategies.
Targeted digital marketing is effective at its core, almost all companies use it nowadays, and for good reason. It is one of the, if not the most effective form of digital marketing and ad campaigns. Getting to know your audience is something you can hear wherever you go for marketing advice, and in the world of digital marketing, it is no different.
Knowing how your audience uses the internet is a big part of digital marketing.
Know your audience
Assuming that your audience is using the same operating system. Guided by your opinion on the popularity of them in your environment can lead to some website visitors being excluded since their operating system doesn’t support your website. Knowledge about the operating system your visitors use can be of great value to your website designers, programmers.
When you have information about the frequently used operating system, you can make a decision on which of them are going to be included in your website design. And also how to tailor your ads. Here it is important to look at your own audience, and not just the industry favorites.
By looking at your own records, you may spot an operating system that is not on the lists of the most popular ones. But designing your website or ad to be supported by it will only improve your traffic since you have determined that your visitors are using it often.
Browsers
After knowing the operating system your audience uses, we come to browsers.
Different web browsers render HTML accordingly to their own rules, meaning that not every web browser will open and view your website the same. Different functions and requirements that your website has set may not be handled on every browser. If you have cookies enabled on your website, browsers that don’t ‘do’ cookies will not read your website correctly.
Looking into User-Agent for assistance in determining which browsers are used the most with your visitors can have a great impact in, again, the website optimization and ad reception. When it comes to know about the most used browsers, besides looking into your own statistics, you should follow the trends as well:
What browsers are favored by the broader audience?
What browsers go under the radar, but are frequently used?
What browsers are expected to have a boost in popularity in the future?
Keeping all that in mind, and combining that knowledge with knowledge about your own stats, can help you make a judgment on how to code your website to support the widest range of browsers and how to make ads that will have the most impact.
Tailor and optimize
Now when you have gathered data on the operating systems and browsers used by your audience, you can tailor your website and advertising campaign by choosing the target audience among them.
There is always an option in choosing to optimize your website and ad to one specific browser and/or operating system. The best bet is to optimize and code your website so it can be functional for every visitor you may get on your website. Doing research on trends in the browser and operating system popularity can help you predict your future traffic and act on it before it is too late. Also, analysis of how your audience changes over time can also play a role in those predicaments.
In the tech world, we are all in, targeted marketing is now going further than just knowing the gender, education, location, and preferences in your audience. Using User Agent to broaden your knowledge about your consumers can have much more benefits, since everything is, or will be getting digitalized.
Conclusion
Fortunately, you don’t have to go searching all around the web or get worried about ways to look into your statistics, MetricsFlare has integrated User-Agent as one of its features, and offers you a detailed look into the amount of traffic, and from which browser and operating system the traffic are coming from.
Check our website to see how this feature works, and join now so you can have a view of all your statistics in real-time and enjoy many more features MetricsFlare offers.
