A Word on Web Standards // Part Two - Benefits to You and Your Visitors
19.06.2008
This is the second part of a two part mini-series on Web standards – if you are new to the idea of Web standards or want a little more information and history on the topic, be sure to read the first part of the series.
Part one gave us a brief working definition of Web standards and the some of the advantages conferred by developing with them:
“Web standards describe a set of specifications and ‘best practices’ for constructing websites that - if followed - will mean the resulting website is faster loading, more easily indexed by search engines, more compatible with future technologies, more maintainable, and more accessible to people with disabilities.“
That’s a nice overview, but to really appreciate the advantages of developing with Web standards we need to look into the matter in a bit more detail. However before we get onto that, we will define a couple of the technical terms that will be used later:
Validation, valid code - Validation is the act of testing a web page against the official specifications for the languages used to build the page. A site that passes validation (i.e. one that uses valid code) has taken a major step towards being considered ‘web standards compliant’, and will provide many of the benefits described below.
Semantic code – A web page that is semantically coded is one in which the relevant elements are correctly identified and flagged up to the browser. For instance, a main heading is correctly identified as a main heading, and a paragraph as a paragraph. It is easy for humans to determine these elements visually, but computers need more help, and a webpage that is marked up in a semantic fashion can confer significant benefits in many areas, especially in obtaining good search engine rankings.
Now let’s take a look at the advantages of developing Web standards sites in more detail…
-
Less code = faster loading + cheaper hosting
Building websites using valid, semantic code (see below for more on this) according to Web standards and ‘best-practice’ principles means that less code is needed to create the site. That means less to download when a visitor comes to your site, which in turn gives faster page loads for them and less bandwidth usage for you. And less bandwidth means less money spent on hosting, as most web hosts charge extra for high bandwidth usage per month.
-
Easier to create and maintain a site wide look and feel
Building websites according to Web standards means a clean separation of the code that makes up the content of your site from the code that deals with the presentation of your site. What does that mean in practice? It means that site wide changes to the layout and presentation are often possible with just one or two lines of code, and it means that it is much easier to achieve visual consistency across your whole site. This means maintenance costs are greatly reduced.
-
Better for search engines
A semantically coded, valid website is much easier for search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to ‘crawl’ (i.e. find and gather content from) and assign the correct weighting to the relevant keywords. That means that your site will be found faster, will achieve a higher page rank and will crop up in more appropriate search results listings.
-
Compatible with future technologies
All of the main browser manufacturers have committed themselves to improving and furthering their support for standards in their browsers; developing with web standards greatly increases your site’s chances of displaying correctly in future upgrades to the browsers people use to view your site.
-
Better accessibility
Creating a standards-compliant site instantly increases the ability for people with disabilities (in particular those who use screen readers) to get all the information from your website in a meaningful fashion. It also makes the site more easily accessible by people using other non-traditional technologies to browse the web.
-
And more…
There are numerous other benefits to web standards, including making your site render better on mobile devices (and on other platforms), enabling nicer printing of web pages and ensuring that web developers new to a site will be quickly able to familiarize themselves to the code.
In summary
As you can no doubt see, web standards provide a benchmark against which both the quality and correctness of your site can be measured. A good adherence to the principles of the standards will ensure that your site gets the most amount of traffic, from many different devices and users, whilst remaining easily maintainable and future-proofed for the next generation of web browsers.
Further reading
If we have roused your interest on the topic of Web standards, or you just want to find out a bit more information, below are a collection of links that we think you will find useful:
- The Web Standards Project’s FAQs on What are web standards and why should I use them? - http://webstandards.org/learn/faq/
- Web Standards for Business, again on the Web Standards Projects’s site - http://www.webstandards.org/learn/articles/web_standards_for_business/
- ‘The Business Benefits of Web Standards’ on Netscape’s DevEdge site - http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/why-web-standards/index_en.html
- Developing with Web Standards – an overview of web standards, aimed at developers - http://www.456bereastreet.com/lab/developing_with_web_standards/
- The meaning of semantics – again fairly developer biased but a useful explanation of the term ’semantic’ in web development - http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=369225
- The Three Layers of Web Design – explains the way web development should be split into three different, separate layers - http://webdesign.about.com/od/intermediatetutorials/a/aa010707.htm
- The Importance of Web Standards – general overview on sitepoint.com - http://www.sitepoint.com/article/importance-web-standards
Tags: accessibility, web design, web development, web standards