Standards Based Web Sites - Why You Should Care
- Better User Experience
Standards-based markup streamlines the user experience. Because pages load quicker and are more responsive, users are likely to spend more time on your site. Once a layout breaks or takes too long to load, people quickly move on to another site.
A standards-compliant site insures wider compatibility. It will more likely render correctly in most modern browsers running on any platform, and degrade gracefully with older browsers. In addition, standards-based sites are future-proof against upcoming browser versions, plus they can accommodate other devices, such as PDAs, often eliminating the need for site-wide redesigns in the future.
- Lower Costs
An experienced designer adhering to a CSS/XHTML approach will most likely bill less development hours than one stuck nesting tables, creating flash, or writing Javascript. Since the use of standards enables rapid development, sites can come on-line quicker, and content can be updated easily. Whether its the rapid, site-wide changes for re-branding efforts, the naddition of new pages with new products, changing of color schemes to fit the latest trends, or removal outdated or time-sensitive material, the quick and easy changes to the all-controlling style sheet dramatically lowers maintenance costs.
- Accessibility
Standards-based websites allow access by disabled web users. Why this that important? More than ever, people use the internet to find companies or resources, and if your web site cannot be viewed by those with vision impairment, you could be limiting your market of customers, and giving a poor impression to those that do visit your site. And there exists the potential for legal issues. A class action lawsuit has been filed against a major US retailer by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) regarding the accessibility of the retailer's web site. If your organization receives federal funds, then you must create a site that is Section 508 compliant, or you risk losing those funds.