Web Design for Small Businesses - Standards Compliance & Accessiblity
An Accessible Standards Compliant Website Provides Many Important Benefits
Affordable Standards Compliance
Our small business web design packages are fully compliant with W3C guidelines for website design 'best practice'. Each of our accessible websites has two W3C icons at the foot of each page, one marked 'HTML401' and the other marked 'CSS'. These icons are placed at the foot of each page to show visitors that our clients' websites are built to a very high standard and what's more, this can be proven by clicking on the icons!
When an icon is clicked, that particular webpage is instantly validated by the W3C and the results shown on the screen. Try this for yourself on this webpage, click the W3C icons at the bottom of the page and you will be taken to the W3C website where the results of your validation test will be displayed.
The result for the 'HTML401' validation test will be: "This Page Is Valid HTML 4.01 Strict!" and the result for the 'CSS' validation test will be: "Congratulations! No Error Found!". This proves that this webpage (you can also use this method to validate the webpages on the rest of our website) has been structured, styled and designed to internationally recognised standards.
Why is Standards Compliance Important in a Small Business Web Design?
Standards compliance provides a reliable method of judging the design quality of a particular website. This is important for the following reasons:
- A standards compliant web design is more accessible to users with disabilities and users of older technology.
- Standards compliant websites are more likely to be catalogued well by search engines.
- Compliant web design produces efficient webpages that use less code than non-compliant webpages. This means that visitors can download and read compliant webpages more quickly and it also reduces 'bandwidth' usage, which in turn reduces costs for all concerned.
- Visitors to your website are looking for reasons to trust you! An affordable website that is standards compliant is seen as more credible and professional, and therefore increases visitors' trust in the owner of the website.
"A standards compliant website is a more successful website."
Why is Accessibility Important in a Small Business Web Design?
These days, a successful website has to be viewable on a wide variety of devices such as PC's, Laptops, Mobile Phones, PDA's, TV's and so on. A successful website must also be viewable using slower broadband connection speeds (256k etc.) since many potential clients/customers live in rural areas or may suffer from poor ISP service or throttled broadband (and this can be an even more critical issue if your website is to be viewed by visitors from other parts of the World).
A website that is designed to be accessible, will meet these requirements and will be viewable by the largest possible audience regardless of the age or type of technology used.
"An accessible website is a more successful website."
Our small business web design packages are all accessible and standards compliant, significantly improving our clients' chances of success, this is also why we are able to guarantee our clients' inclusion in all the major search engines.
