The business benefits of Web Standards
Sites built using Web Standards save money, make money, keep your customers happy and attract new audiences - here's why…
At Definition, we’re aware our clients are not the slightest bit interested in the technology we use to build websites. We shy away from discussing the technicalities – it’s the business benefits of whatever technology we’re using that’s important, not the technology itself.
However, when it comes to Web Standards (a website building technique) we think you might be interested. Websites built using Web Standards make more money! This is because Web Standards-based websites…
- Provide a better user-experience (meaning happier customers more willing to buy)
- Enjoy higher traffic and more visitors
- Benefit from reduced short and long term costs
- Give a better return on your investment
- Provide more flexibility
- Make your content accessible to a far higher potential number of visitors
- Are future-proofed and forward-compatible with future technologies
Sounds good! Before we examine these benefits in more detail, let us quickly bring you up to speed – what actually are these Web Standards? Pay attention at the back!
What are Web Standards?
Standards exist in all walks of life to make life easier, and that same principle can be applied to the Web. For example, your new washing machine fits comfortably in the space under the worktop precisely because washing machines are built to an agreed, standard size.
Similarly, a simple standard was decided on for the Web, after many years of incompatibility and ever-increasingly bloated web pages.
Web Standards means your web developer coding web pages in a special way:
- The Web pages themselves contain only simple, properly structured content
- The rules for the visual presentation of those pages are kept separately in a separate file (a ‘stylesheet’ actually…), rather than tangled-up within the content.
This is great! By structuring content properly, and separating content from presentation, we can all reap the benefits of Web Standards – developers, users, clients, marketers, business owners and bean counters alike!
Sounds good! So how will this make me more money?
Good question. Here’s a rundown of 10 amazing benefits of Web Standards for you as a website and business owner:
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Quicker to develop
Sites built using Web Standards are quicker to develop, meaning reduced costs for you, the client. Furthermore, we don't have to build several different versions for different browsers - one version is quite enough! Lower costs all round.
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Quicker, easier and cheaper to maintain or redesign
Web Standards-based sites can be maintained very easily and quickly, which reduces costs considerably. Content changes are easy to make as the web pages themselves contain only a very small amount of funny website code.
Site-wide redesigns in future are straightforward. We simply make changes to one 'stylesheet' file to see a whole new visual design take effect across the whole website. Beats starting from scratch everytime!
Importantly, sites built to a common standard mean that you, the customer, need no longer be locked-in to one developer or technology, giving you more flexibility and choice.
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Future proof
Sites built to a common standard are forward-compatible with future technology - future-proof! No more expense of having to build a new site to keep in line with the latest Web browsers. Your site will work now, and in the future - guaranteed.
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Flexible and multi-purpose
The visual styling of standards-compliant pages is undertaken in one separate, small file. This means that it's a doddle to re-purpose or reuse the same website content for a variety of different purposes.
- Fancy a new look for the Summer? Done.
- Want to give mobile phone users a different visual experience? Easy.
- Like to give visually impaired or low vision users a chance to alter the page layout more appropriately for their needs? No problem.
With Web Standards, content is written once, in one place. That provides enormous time and cost-saving benefits, both now and in future.
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Viewable in all web browsers, including newer non-traditional devices
No longer are websites simply viewed on desktop PCs. Demand to access Web content on newer, non-traditional devices is growing sharply, and Web Standards is the way to meet that demand with ease.
With Web Standards, one website is viewable in all devices - this includes PDAs, mobile phones, games consoles (such as Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, PSP), refrigerators, etc.
In 2008 alone there'll be an estimated 58 million PDAs sold worldwide [source: eTForecast] and one third of the world?s population will own a wireless device [source: ClickZ]).
You can't afford to miss out on this market - with Web Standards you won't have to.
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Faster loading web pages
Building website with Web Standards can mean page sizes reduced by 50% or more. This can mean a 10 second page download reduced to 2 seconds.
Less waiting time equates to a better user experience, which in turn equates to higher conversion rates and sales!
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Less wasteful of expensive bandwidth
'Bandwidth' is the amount of code that is downloaded by people visiting your website. The more visitors your website has, the more bandwidth it uses up.
Bandwidth can be expensive. However, Web Standards-based pages are much smaller in file-size than the bloated pages of yesteryear, meaning much reduced bandwidth bills, especially if your site gets busy.
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Accessible to the widest number of people
Websites built using Web Standards are naturally accessible to the widest group of visitors, because the pages themselves consist of well-structured content built to a common standard. A visually-impaired visitor using screen reader software will still be able to access the content. Users with low vision can easily be provided with a completely different layout to accomodate their needs.
"In the UK there are around 1.6 million registered blind people, 1.5 million with cognitive difficulties, six million with dyslexia and a further 3.4 million who have some problem making use of a standard computer difficult or impossible. In addition there is an increasing number of elderly ‘silver surfers’ with failing eyesight or arthritis. These potential internet users represent a spending power in excess of £120 billion."Robin Christopherson, AbilityNet’s Web Consultancy Manager
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Search engine friendly
Search engines are, in effect, your website's biggest blind visitor. Search engines care only about text content, which is why Google loves a Web Standards website!
Standards-compliant websites have a high ratio of content-to-code and are properly structured, with no need for masses of unneccesary code. This allows seach engines to find your content easily and thus rank it more highly.
Furthermore, standards-compliant web pages have the most important content in the page near the top of the underlying code (regardless where it is on the visual page), giving search engines the best chance of finding it.
A more highly ranked site gets more visitors and so make more money.
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Design consistency
Careful branding and a smooth customer experience can make or break an online business. Unlike the bad old days, Web Standards makes it simple to ensure that design consistency is maintained across a whole website.
Need to change the font and colour of every subheading on a 500-page website to adhere to new brand guidelines? Easy - make the change in just one place and that change is seen throughout the whole site. That saves money, saves time, and keeps customers happy.
What next?
Have an existing website that might benefit from a Web Standards overhaul? Give us a call on 0845 1308389 to discuss how we can help you reap the benefits.
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