Adhering to Web Standards to Improve Business

Taking web standards into account when designing a web site may not be a primary concern for many site owners, but when it comes to finding an extra edge to improve their business, they are more than willing to do anything required to increase revenues. Let's see how complying with Web standards can help a business web site.

What are the Web Standards?

On the Web, the main standards are the languages used when creating web sites. The most wide-spread ones are HTML, XHTML and CSS. HTML or XHTML are used to create the backbone of web sites - the structure. CSS, in turn, is used to style, format and position the structure and content.

What is Web Standards Compliance?

Put simply, web standards compliance is using web languages correctly. This involves using HTML tags properly and the way they were and are intended to be used. For instance, one of the most common mistakes against the web standards is using table tags for layout, while the correct usage is to use them only for tabular data (information to be put in tables).

Advantages of Web Standards Compliance

Creating quality, Web standards compliant code has a number of benefits:

•Web site forward compatibility •Web site increased site download speed •Web site browser compatibility •Web site easier site maintenance •Web site broader target audience