3 Reasons For Our Obsession with Web Standards
As developers, we’re a technical bunch. We like to talk about the nuts and bolts of code and what makes the web work. While we try not to get too technical on people, sometimes we slip a little, especially when it comes to the idea of web standards and our approach to web site development and SEO.
Why?
Many reasons, really. Here are our top three.
1. Search Engine Optimization
As we discussed in the article on semantic tags, you want the HTML tags (the “markup”) in your site to be as minimal as possible, to convey meaning rather than visual formatting, and to be easy for search engine programs to catalog and rank. Devoting plenty of effort to creating a solid foundation based on web standards is well worth it, because it makes the search engines’ jobs much easier. The result? A better shot at good ranking.
By the way, when we start an SEO campaign on a typical web site, it generally takes $1-2k in work to get it standards-compliant and ready. When we do the development from the beginning, that work is already done, minimizing SEO startup costs. The benefit is a site that hits the ground running. That’s kind of a side point, though. On to our second reason:
2. Compatibility
Most web sites work perfectly fine in the browser the developer used, on the platform the developer ran. That much is a given; anybody with a simple web editor can do that. The difference between that and professional web development is vast. A standards-based web site works:
- in any web browser
- on any operating system
- on any device
- by any program
…that wants to consume the content on the site. Odds are that the majority of your site’s visitors will be people using something like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, or Opera on a Windows PC or a Mac. However, you likely don’t want your web presence to exclude people on Blackberries or other PDAs, do you? What about screen readers for the vision impaired? It takes a professional group with expertise in web standards to build sites that have this level of cross-platform/device compatibility.
Oh, and you may have noticed how this ties in with the first point (and extra points to you if you saw it): what are search engine spiders but special vision-impaired programs that don’t have a web browser but still want to read your site? They’re the most common non-browser device there is!
3. The Future
This is a fairly simple extension of the second point. A year ago did anybody outside of Apple Inc have any idea that they’d be releasing a hybrid iPod/phone device? Nope. So what happens when the iPhone hits the market? Do we need to rebuild all of our web sites with a special iPhone version? Not if we built to web standards.
You see, living by web standards makes your web site future-proof. Web standards are methods and conventions that we all agree to follow for the sake of compatibility. New devices might work differently from old ones internally, but you can bet they work best in a standards-compliant environment. Building to standards now saves re-development costs tomorrow.
It’s an Issue of Quality
The whole thing revolves around the idea of quality. Next time we’ll discuss the implications of that idea, and why you should insist on high-quality work on your web presence.
Until then, realize that it boils down to this: we push web standards and quality because we care about our clients.
We love to dote on our clients. You deserve to be treated like royalty. Come on, contact us to get started. You know you want to.
