You don’t hear a lot about “web standards” from your typical web design company. You might even wonder if there is such a thing as “web standards”. I assure you, there is, and how well your website conforms to web standards will influence everything from your search engine ranking to your website visitor’s experience.

If you think about it, web standards make sense. For instance, what if a home builder decided to go 3 feet between studs? or 4 feet? Once the drywall is up, you wouldn’t be able to tell but I wouldn’t want to own that house on a windy day. Just as we have standards in building houses, the internet has it’s own set of standards for building websites.

You’re probably thinking “well, websites aren’t houses”. That’s fair. What about other media? Print? Radio? Or television? What would your brochure look like if it was created on a photocopier? How would your radio ad sound if it were recorded on a cassette player? What would your TV ad look like if it was captured on a phone? Standards in any industry exist to insure a baseline of quality. If you have a website, you want it to look professional, you want it to be found and, most importantly, you want every visitor to have a good experience when they visit you.

“Okay,” you’re thinking, “web standards might be a good thing. But how do I know if my website conforms to the established standards?” It’s simple. In fact, is so simple you’re going to call up your web designer right after you test your site and ask them why they didn’t do this before delivering your website. Simply go to the W3C Markup Validation Service, type in your website’s address (i.e. www.example.com) and click ‘Check’. Presto! You have your verdict. I hope you’re not disappointed.

So what is W3C. It is the standards body for the internet. It establishes the standards that make the internet function. Without W3C, the internet would be chaos with loads of proprietary applications that couldn’t talk to each other. Think “every website you want to visit has it’s own custom browser you have to download and install first”. Without the W3C it would literally be that bad. If you haven’t heard of them, don’t be concerned. You probably couldn’t name the organizations that set the standards for homes, cars, print, audio or video, either. The point is, your web designer should know.

So, when you ran your website through the W3C validator, were you disappointed? Perhaps you’re a little unhappy that your web designer didn’t check their own work? If so try this; Check your web designers website using the same validator.

How did that go? The truth is, a lot of designers spend so much time trying to make things look right that they forget to apply the standards. Or they start out with standards but, then, some code gets introduced later and they forget to recheck. Or perhaps they are more ‘designer’ than ‘builder’ and don’t even know about the W3C Validator. I’ll leave it up to you to ask your web designer why.

The fact is, every solid, quality product starts with a good foundation. If you compromise on the foundation, everything that comes after is also compromised. Put more simply, if your web designer didn’t take 2 minutes to run your website through the validator and correct any errors, what else did they forget to do? Did they do a complete job of Search Engine Optimization? Did they check your website against other browsers and against other operating systems. And what does that mean to the search engines and, especially, the people visiting your website? Will your website hold up as new browsers are introduced or will you need to invest more time and money into your website just to keep it functioning?

The truth is, what you see when you visit your website may not be what other people see.

If you have a website and it does not pass validation, demand your designer fix it. If you are shopping for a web designer and want to test the quality of their work, check their site using the validator. Then check a random sampling from their portfolio. Then insist that your website be validated BEFORE you make final payment and take delivery. That way you can be sure that your investment will provide the consistency and quality that web standards provide.

We are very new Web Marketing Company in Eau Claire – EXTREMELY new – but only as a company.  You’ve already seen our work.  Sites like Micon Cinemas, Chippewa Valley Softub, Chippewa Valley Air Show 2010, Chippewa Valley Renaissance Faire and others.  The fact is, some of the most popular websites in the Eau Claire were designed by our staff.  We have a lot to show you so, please, stay tuned for real web design for Eau Claire and Western Wisconsin!