One curse that web developers face regularly are emails or phone calls like: “My website isn’t working properly” or “I couldn’t buy online.”.

Web development is a tricky programming profession because you can’t guarantee how your programming will work on all the different web browsers. They all behave in slightly different ways, so there are often inconsistencies between them and code needs to be developed for the website to display correctly in most of them. Occasionally a genuine programming error will also occur.

To help your web team diagnose and correct the problem quickly please give as much information as you can:

• What web browser are you using (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Iphone etc.)
• What version of a web browser you’re using (e.g. Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer 8 etc.)
• What page of the website were you on when the problem occured
• Please be as specific as you can in describing the problem
• Did any error message appear on the screen? If so, write it down.
• Ideally if you can please take a screenshot of the problem and email that over to your web company, but this often isn’t possible.

With this sort of information, and problem can be idenfitied and corrected in 5 minutes. Without it, it can take over an hour just to find the problem. It’s a win-win for everyone.