Hey, web standards make good business sense. Today we will cover a few more of the reasons that this is true.

Site Future Compatibility? Web standardized languages such as XHTML and CSS were designed to work forever. They will be supported for an unlimited period of time. Designing a site according to the web standards will ensure that the website structure will not need to be redone in the near future and this reduces the amount of work needed for the site and expenses to the site owner.

Increased Download Speed? When you use XHTML for content and structure, and CSS for styling and formatting, the page size is reduced from designs with a tables style layout. Because users enjoy fast-loading websites, they will be more apt to become clients of a web standards compliant website.

Browser Compatibility? A standards compliant site will be displayed correctly in every standards compliant browser. Adjusting the site to suit a less helpful browser, like Internet Explorer, is much easier with CSS than with tables. This saves enormous amounts of time for a web designer.

Easier Site Maintenance? It is much easier to edit a website When the content and styling are separated with XHTML and CSS because they are located in different files. If you want to adjust the look of the main page heading you just need to change a line or two in a style sheet to change the appearance of all the headings on the entire website. Editing content is also easier because no styling and formatting is in the way, so it’s easy to spot the content in clean and semantically correct code markup.

Broader Target Audience? Web standards are used by PDAs, phones and other devices. So a site that adheres to web standards will be displayed correctly with little if any editing to be displayed correctly on a platform other than a computer.

What’s the Solution? Redesign with web standards and visitors in mind. Get the help of an in-house web designer or a professional.

On the Straight and Narrow,
Arthur Browning