Best Practices

I came across a good article yesterday with the title, The business case for Web standards-based development. I like the break down at the end of the article of all the benefits that come with designing a standards compliant web site.

It got me thinking about the clients I’ve had in the last year. Most of them don’t really know or care that I did my best to adhere to standards when designing their sites, and I think that’s probably typical of most of the clients of freelance designers. In truth that’s probably my fault. I’ve always made the assumption that the advantages of standardization really only apply to larger sites with high profiles and lots of traffic. As I look at this list, though, many of them hold just as much appeal for the “little guy”.

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For my money, a standardista in the web design arena is someone who will let nothing stand in the way of having perfectly compliant code. It should strictly validate as HTML (or XHTML). Any CSS files should also validate. If the customer wants or would benefit from a feature that can’t be accomplished in a standards-compliant manner, than the standardista will refuse to create it. Sort of flies in the face of the customer-is-always-right school of thought, doesn’t it?

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What most clients want to hear about search engine optimization is that a few hours adding some keywords to their site will rocket them to the number one result on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for any and all searches that contain their product or service. In some industries that was possible 10 years ago. I doubt it’s possible in any industry today, and if you offer SEO services, it’s likely you’re going to be the one breaking the bad news to your customers.

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Cascading style sheets weren’t always an option for designing your web site. When the Internet first began to transition from the world of academia into a commercially viable tool, not much thought had been put into how information would be displayed. Creative designers recognized, though, they could make use of the limited markup options available to dramatically effect how the information on a web page was displayed.

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