The Brandcast

Editor’s Note: The internet is a big, crazy place. Surprisingly, though, there are some ‘rules’ that can guide you and your website development in the most effective direction possible.

Web Standards are a set of specifications that define rules (”best practices”) for creating and interpreting web-based content. They were developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to bring order to what has become the chaotic World Wide Web. The W3C’s main goal is “web interoperability”, the compatibility of web technologies so any hardware or software my be used to access the web.

So what does that mean to a business owner? Well, it has several implications, such as lower production costs and greater accessibility to more people on more types of internet ready devices. Did that get your attention?

In the past, lack of support for these standards has forced developers to program multiple versions of their pages in order to achieve visibility and functionality on incompatible browsers. (Imagine the United Nations without those interpretation headphones. There were too many ‘languages’ with no common way to communicate.) Naturally, this extra work raised production costs by more than 25%. Because of these higher costs, many developers and site owners had to make hard decisions, code several versions of the site or choose which browsers to exclude. Unfortunately, exclusion leads to a direct loss of any potential visitors who utilize the excluded browsers. And reprogramming a site every time a new technology or browser becomes available is another source of higher production costs.

When developers build sites according to web standards, they are building sites with longevity. They are building sites that will work next year and the year after that. They are building sites that will work in more browsers with a more standard way of displaying their information. They will also be available on more devices, such as PDAs and cell phones.

Sites designed according to web standards are more accessible. This means your information, your product or your service is more readily available to people with disabilities. Millions of people have disabilities that affect their use of the web. More than 75% of websites today are developed with technologies that are barriers to people with disabilities, such as Flash, non-semantic HTML and sites made solely of sliced together images.

Web Standards have been in practice for some time now and your web developer/designer should be aware of their importance. If they are not, you are now armed with awareness, and should pass that along. There are many resources on the internet about developing with Web Standards. If you are looking for a more in-depth description, please see the links below.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
http://www.w3c.org/consortium/

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
http://www.w3c.org/WAI/

The Web Standards Project
http://www.webstandards.org/