Wal-Mart just launched a video download service on their website. Big deal. Yet another bunch of movies you have to watch on your computer instead of on your TV the way God meant you to (or, Heaven forbid, on your iPod). In any event, the reason I mention this is because they apparently don’t care about the growing number of people using Firefox. Here’s what their new site looks like to these useless consumers:

Not pretty.

Getting a reliable number when it comes to browser market share is notoriously difficult, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that Firefox users make up between 15% to 25% of the web surfing public. Now think about your business. Is there anything you do today that makes it hard (not impossible, but hard) for 15% to 25% of your qualified current or future customers to engage with your product or service? Of course not. Not on purpose, anyway.

Another example. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m always looking for my next car. It doesn’t matter that I’ve had my current car for only 18 months or that I have to keep it for another 18, I’m always looking. One of the cars I’m interested in is Toyota’s FJ Cruiser. Toyota has made two decisions that makes my interest in their car harder to satisfy than it should be. First, they utilize something called the Viewpoint plug-in to power their car configuration tool. Why? Why not Flash? MINI has probably the very best car configuration tool on the web and it’s 100% Flash. Why go with some other plug-in that most people have to install? I’m sure the Viewpoint sales guys have an answer for that, but the user experience guy in me says Toyota should have figured out a way to work around it. Funny thing is, the use of Viewpoint isn’t even why I mention Toyota.

The page that detects the Viewpoint plug-in doesn’t work with Firefox. I’ve installed the thing several times yet it never properly detects that I have. It warns me I need it before I click the link to bypass their warning and then keeps warning me I don’t have it even though the configuration thing seems to be working just fine. If I bounce over to Safari, it works. I assume Internet Explorer users don’t have any problems, either.

So now let’s do some math. The FJ Cruiser sells for about $25,000 (higher with options, but I’m being conservative). By choosing to use a technology that makes it hard for me, a Firefox user, to consider their product, they’re putting potential sales in jeopardy. I don’t know how many FJ Cruisers Toyota will sell this year, but let’s use a nice round number like 50,000. If each one sells for (conservatively) $25k and about 20% of web-based shoppers are using Firefox (and also assuming that two-thirds of car buyers are using the web in making their decisions – a number I just totally made up), Toyota is needlessly endangering upwards of $165,000,000 in sales.

Will anyone not buy an FJ Cruiser because the website sucks? I don’t know. Buy when you consider the ease in which nearly everyone online can be accommodated (assuming you plan and develop for them appropriately), why risk losing even one sale? This is not rocket science, people.