Web Standards

Most modern web designers are aware of web standards and their positive impact on the web. Although the importance of using web standards isn’t an issue for many of us, how we talk about them, especially to potential clients in a sales pitch is.

The Pitch

Imagine the following: You’re pitching to a prospective client that is in need of a site redesign.

You’ve got one hour.

You talk through your prospective client’s challenges, maybe even solve a few along the way. You discuss look and feel, messaging, and how the site will work. The excitement builds as you both begin to “see” the site.

Twenty minutes to go.

You present your process and your work. Time line and budget are discussed, and the potential client begins to feel like a new client. You should feel happy, but the meeting isn’t complete.

What’s Missing?

It’s your duty as a web designer to explain the importance of web standards to a potential client. The problem is, if you try explaining web standards during a sales pitch, there’s a good chance that your prospective client’s eyes will glaze over.

Why?

It is my belief that it comes down to two specific reasons:

1. Client Expectations During a Sales Pitch

   Prospective clients more than likely will hire you for your ideas, and not for your knowledge about web standards.

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Think of CSS as synonymous to Web Standards Compliance?

A client just pointed out an error to me. I had been using CSS as a short-hand way of referring to Standards Compliance. The use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is such a large part of Web Standards Compliance, they have become almost synonymous to me, but they are not, in fact, synonymous.

Advantages to CSS

Sites will often use CSS to control content styling for things like fonts, headers, links, and tables. This separates many of the style attributes from the page content. There are a number of advantages to doing this:

• Pages easier for search engines to index and can be faster to load.
• Having style controls located in one place promotes stylistic consistency and makes it easier to maintain or change styles.

Advantages of Web Standards Compliance

It is possible (and even common), to have a site that utilizes CSS that does not adhere to web standards. Such sites, therefore, do not reap the full benefits availed through compliance to web standards. Benefits like:

• Better Search Engine Indexing
• Better Accessibility for wider range of browsers and devices
• Better accessibility for wider range of users
• Faster load times
• Ease of update and maintenance
• Ease of printing

Sites that use CSS will often use tables for layout

Generally, what we find is that although a site uses CSS for styles, the site layout is implemented using a complex system of nested tables.