Web standards are the wave of the future. And if you don’t jump on board, you better jump ship. You’re at risk for lost visitors, lost reveneues, and even potential lawsuits.
The downfall without web standards
Many small businesses do what they can to get by and create a website using the easily accessible software that they’re comfortable with. This typically includes software such as FrontPage, Publisher, or some canned web template software from their hosting provider. Unfortunately, these types of programs are usually the worst when it comes to maintaining web standards.
When a site does not conform to standards, you immediately limit your potential visitors. You’ll have issues with accessibility and compatibility. And with all the new web-enabled devices out there, you want to be sure that your site works on all of them.
- Accessibility
- Accessibility is a website’s ability to be easily accessed by those with disabilities. According to the WAI,
Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities.
- Compatibility
- Compatibility is a website’s ability to be correctly rendered across multiple browsers, operating systems, and devices.
Benefits of Web Standards
Web standards says to create a site that is accessible to all no matter what. This is ideal, however, there are many more reasons to get rid of your table-based layouts (With standards, tables should only be used for tabular data). Here are a few more benefits to moving your site to web standards.
- Future Proof
- New browsers are being developed with web standards in mind. You won’t have to recode your website to accomodate the new stuff. And as standards are refined, upgrading your code becomes much easier.
- Cost Effective Cross-Compatible Everything
- Standards-based websites will be immediately viewable by any up-to-date browser. Your content will be available to visitors no matter what browser, operating system, PDA, or smart phone someone uses. This all happens without having to develop different versions of your site (although you still can!)
- Improved Search Engine Indexing
- Although it’s arguable, standards can help with higher search engine placement. By using web standards, robots are fed exactly what they want—highly structured content.
- Lightning fast design changes
- Content and design remain separated. This allows for site-wide design changes to happen with a simple change of CSS. The CSS Zen Garden is an excellent example of how CSS can be used to create different designs (colors and layout) using the same content.
Standardize your website
It’s always easier to have standards compliance when you’re starting a project from scratch. But we don’t always have that luxury. If you’re ready to make the leap, here’s what you can do.
- Verify proper HTML tag usage. HTML tags are for developing document structure, not font sizes or layout. It should be common sense… Use header tags for headings. Use list tags (ol, ul, dl) for lists. Use tables for tabular data and not layout.
- Separate design from content. An standalone HTML document (without CSS) should be only content. It should not include fluffy images that are irrelevant (i.e. background images and borders). Images that are pertinent, such as a product’s image on the products page, are considered part of the content and should be included.
- Test, test, test. Use validation services to check your code for accessibility, coding errors, and more. This will help to ensure you have content that is available to any visitor, including search engine robots.
Do you need more help in identifying how your site can improve? Rather have someone else do the work? Hire me!
Do you have other tips or links that maybe helpful? Please comment below.
