By ensuring that your web site is designed to modern standards, you can benefit from significant cost savings and even increased revenue generation.
In the mid-1990s, web sites mainly consisted of black text on a white background. Since then web designers have become more ambitious, experimenting with ways to build more attractive pages.
Unfortunately, many of these techniques involved workarounds and tricks, such as laying out pages using invisible tables, using images for text, or even designing for just one browser. Although these methods worked, they also had a large number of unwanted side effects, such as poor accessibility, reduced usability and increased development costs.
However, as the Internet has matured, standards for building web sites have been developed by the W3C, the body that governs the formats that make up the web.
These web standards set out best practice guidelines for designing pages to certain internationally-agreed rules, which will be supported far into the future. Although the guidelines are technical, the end results are compelling from a business perspective.
A key part of these web standards is the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to separate of structure and content from styling (fonts, colours and layout). Although the use of CSS removes the need for tricks and workarounds, sadly many web designers still rely on the old techniques for creating sites.
One analogy is that web standards are like building regulations. Sure, anyone with a hammer, nails and a few materials can build a basic structure that will keep the rain off for a while, but only by adhering to building regulations can you be sure that the structure will be safe, easy to maintain and will work properly for years to come.
By hiring a web design agency that builds sites to modern web standards, you can benefit in a number of ways, which we outline below.
By using Cascading Style Sheets to separate presentation from content, a site's appearance can be altered by changing just one file. This makes small changes to the design much faster and therefore cheaper.
Because pages built to standards can be validated against a set of rules, any errors are easier to locate and fix. This reduces costs by making testing easier.
When formatting and layout is separated from page content, it is much easier to reuse or repurpose the content for multiple formats or devices, e.g. producing a "printer friendly" page, or pages that can be viewed on a mobile phone. This can also help reduce development costs.
Pages built using modern techniques tend to load much more quickly, which means they make your site feel much more responsive to visitors. Numerous studies have shown that people react more favourably to sites with fast-loading pages. In the long-term this can translate to increased sales.
While most people still use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, other browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Safari are rapidly gaining in popularity. Some people are even using PDAs and mobile phones to browse. By building your site to web standards, you can ensure it works in the widest range of browsers possible, thereby maximising your audience.
Pages made to web standards tend to be smaller in file size, with styling information being contained in a separate file that is "cached" by the visitor's browser. As a result, popular web sites can benefit from a significant reduction in running costs thanks to lower bandwidth (data transfer) and hosting charges.
Because search engines analyse pages differently to the way humans view them, correctly marked-up pages are normally rewarded with better listings. This is because by separating presentation code from content using CSS, pages contain a much better information/code ratio, making search terms more prominent.
Web standards have been created with accessibility in mind. By making a site accessible to disabled users – a demographic often overlooked by your competitors – you are able to present your site's content to a larger audience and ensure you are in compliance with anti-discrimination legislation.
If you decide that your site needs a "fresh look" two or three years down the line, it will be much easier to achieve if the site was originally built using CSS and correct mark-up. Because CSS store all the formatting in one file, the appearance of the site can be changed by updating one file. For a complex site, this reduction in work can save thousands of pounds.
When a site is designed to modern standardised code, it is much easier for a new developer to understand and change. This means you won't feel "locked in" to using the original developer for any future changes, and will reduce the time taken for updates.
At the moment most browsers will still display poorly built pages correctly. However, as the web evolves it is likely that new browsers will be released that will be less forgiving of incorrectly coded pages. By making sure your site is designed to recognised modern standards, you can ensure that your site will work for years to come, even when new web browsers are released.
To find out how we can help design your site to modern web standards, please contact us.