Complying with Web Standards
Our website designs comply as closely as possible with the Web Standards recommendations and guidelines as laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The W3C Web Standards guidelines represent what are currently the best practices to be employed when designing web sites, to ensure they can be clearly viewed in all web browsers and across other devices such as mobile phones, that they are accessible by the widest possible number of users, that web pages are coded with valid HTML or xHTML, CSS and Javascript, and that the HTML coding meets accessibility and semantic guidelines.
Now that nearly all modern browsers render (display) web pages in close compliance with Web Standards, designing pages and sites that similarly comply with the W3C guidelines has many direct benefits for the organisation or small business which owns the website:
- Pages load faster, so visitors stay longer
- Pages/sites reach the widest possible number of users
- Pages are more fully and accurately indexed by search engines
- Pages and sites are easier and more intuitive to use
- Pages will remain stable no matter what future advances are made in browser and other internet technologies
- Pages and sites can be viewed in all manner of current and future web-enabled devices, such as mobile phones
- Sites are easier to update by other web designers
- Sites comply with statutory accessibility requirements as they become legally binding
All-in-all, web designers who do not possess the necessary skills and knowledge to create standards-compliant pages and sites, or who simply do not know that these standards exist, are doing their clients no favours whatsoever, by producing ineffective web sites which cost time and money to put right.
Nothing has become clearer in the web design world over the past 10 years than that designing in close compliance with web standards is the only way forward, and something all site owners should insist upon as an absolute prerequisite of their designs, providing a solid basis for the future success of their web sites.
