What are website standards?

Website standards are guidelines set out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is a community made up of members from large companies who all have one goal in mind, having one set of rules for all websites built. Standards for websites are outlined in detail ranging from the design of the website to how privacy and accessibility is handled.

In favour of standards

Having one set of rules when building websites has its obvious advantages. Advantages of standards include maintainability of the website and Search Engine Optimisation.

Maintainability

This issue is often overlooked by the current web designer. By using standards compliant code the website becomes easier to maintain, both for the current designer and for any future designers. As the owner of the website this leads to lower costs when changes are needed on the website.

Search Engine Optimisation

This point can be debated by various Internet Marketing people however the fact still remains that when a website is built to standards Search Engines can visit the website quicker and easier. Google have come out and stated that the speed of a website is taken into account when ranking websites. Anything that can be done to a website to improve the search engine ranking is a good thing, right?

Against standards

On the flip side, website standards are seen as a waste of time by many web developers. The reason being that coding a website to standards can take a lot longer. As a client, if you are paying for the amount of time a developer works on a website, this can increase the cost. If a website works and serves its target audience why bother having a website built to the latest standards?

In conclusion

Web Standards aren’t a requirement when building websites. HTML (the code websites are built in) is flexible enough that even if a website isn’t coded correctly, the website can still look OK.

Ultimately though it comes down to the visitors to that website and if they will benefit from website standards Speed, usability and search engine optimisation are all good reasons to use standards as they will all improve the user experience. Given the choice you should always have your website built to standards however only by someone who has always used web standards and can create websites quickly.

When starting Centation, 3 years ago, I had 6 years of experience with websites but no real life knowledge or experience let alone any business experience. I suppose that’s what happens when you go to University and go straight into business! I had to quickly realise that being able to product great websites wasn’t enough. I had to have the knowledge and skills to be able to bring new work in and also to effectively support our customers. However this doesn’t just apply for the web industry.

If you own a business in any industry you will, at some point, need to get out of your comfort zone and do something that you aren’t used to doing. Being the best person with numbers as an accountant doesn’t mean much if you lack social skills and confidence to bring in the work to begin with. Networking was my skill which got me out of my comfort zone. It forced me to talk to other people about business and to try and dumb down what we did without sounding too technical but still conveying the benefits of using us. It also allowed me to understand customers on a business level rather than a technical level. I quickly realised that companies rarely care about what particular language a website is written in or what your choice of graphics package is, just as long as you provide what they want.

Skills I have learnt

The skills I had to learn whilst starting Centation are as follows. This isn’t an exhaustive list but is based on the skills I had to quickly learn.

• Basic accountancy
• Project management
• Negotiation skills
• Customer service
• Confidence
• Sales skills
• Marketing

As you can see there are many skills that I had to learn to ensure that the company survived its first year.

With this post, I am not saying that I am brilliant at all of these skills, I am merely stating the number of different skills that I have had to learn to ensure that the business survives its first year and continues to grow year on year.

I personally think that the defining factor between a hobby and a business is if you have, or are willing to learn, these other business skills. Until you do its just a hobby.

What is ‘Accessibility’?

Accessibility is the term given to the way people access the web who have some sort of physical disability. It also includes people who find it difficult to browse the web as usual and includes, but isn’t limited to:

• Visually impaired (blind or colour blind)
• Unable to use a mouse or keyboard
• May not be able to read the words on the website or have problems understanding the text
• Older people who find it difficult to use a computer

How do people with these difficulties access websites?

People with visual disabilities will usually use a screen reader of some sort that often reads aloud what the mouse cursor is currently hovering over or gives feedback using a Refreshable Braille Display. As you can imagine this can be difficult to use especially if the website isn’t created with accessibility in mind!

Why create accessible websites?

Apart from the moral and ethical issues around having a website that all users can interact with, creating websites that adhere to accessibility standards is good practice and doesn’t discriminate between your users. In some cases it is a legal requirement for the website to cater to people with disabilities, such as government or certain public sector industries.

So how hard is it to create accessible websites?

Any web designer should be able to create accessible websites, there are a few tips and tricks the designer and developer must to do ensure that people accessing the website with a screen reader can navigate through the website. If you feel having an accessible website is important your current web designer can assist, if not please get in touch.

If you think that accessibility is important and want us to have a look to see how accessible your website really is, please get in touch

Your options

There are many websites out there which can offer this service on your website. Most of them are very easy to setup and produce graphs and detailed statistics. Below is a list of a couple, some you may not recognise but I’m sure you will recognise one.

• Google Analytics
• Mint
• Woopra
• Clicky

Some of the above are free and some are paid. Google Analytics is the big one and is probably the most popular however there are alternatives available. Since Google Analytics is the most widely uses I will outline how to get it setup.

Setting up an account

To use Google Analytics you will need a Google account, most of you will probably already have one, however if you don’t you can simply create one for free. Your Google account can also be used for Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa and any other Google service.

Adding your website

Once logged into your Google Analytics account you will need to create a new profile for your website. This is done by clicking on the link in the top right of the table, as shown in the image to the left.

The whole signup process is well documented, this next stage just requires you to enter in the website address that you want to add Google Analytics to. Be aware, as you will see at the next stage, you will need direct access to the website code—so you can’t add a competitors website and track their statistics!

Pasting the code

This is the stage where you need direct access to your website. If you have access to the code (either through a control panel or FTP) then great! If not then you will need to pass the code shown to your web designer or the person that maintains your website. The code needs to be added towards the bottom of each page, just below the tag. If your site uses “headers” and “footers” then you can place it in the “header” file and let it automatically effect every page on your site.

Complete, sit back and wait

Once all the above steps have been completed, Google will monitor your website and display graphs and tables of your data within your Analytics account.

If you need advice or support in understanding exactly what is displayed in your Google Analytics account, please feel free to get in touch.

Am I targeting anyone at all?

Every site has a target audience with specific requirements. There are no exceptions. Even the very biggest sites will try and hone in on a specific segment of the market. Just look at the differences between Google, Yahoo! and Bing. All primarily search engines but they have vastly different ways to target their chosen market. Microsoft and Apple are both in the technology market but take two opposite paths.

Why do I need to target someone?

To get the best results from your website you need to have a target audience in order to create a design that will appeal to them, create copy that will engage and interest enough to make them keep coming back for more.

If you sell women’s anti-wrinkle cream then you really do not need to target men since they will make up the vast minority of your visitors. We also know the age range of the average visitor and why they would have come to your site. Knowing your audience will equate to half the battle won with making your site a success. We know exactly who to design and create copy for.

Admittedly it wont always be this easy to define your audience, but there are many points you can focus on, and it takes research, research and then some more research.

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Geographic location
• Education
• Technological competence
• etc.

Is my site content working?

There is no loyalty on the Internet. If your audience cannot find what they are looking for on your site then they will simply go elsewhere. There will be hundreds of other sites just like yours just a Google search away. Help your audience by presenting your content correctly. Users do not read content, they first scan titles and bullet points and if they think it relevant they will then delve into small paragraphs — no one wants to read a wall of text. ^source

One of the most important points is to put yourself in your users shoes. Exactly what are you looking for? What do you want? What are the keywords that will grab your attention and make you want to read the rest of the content?

What is SEO

SEO, for people who aren’t aware, stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is the process to improve your website’s ranking in the search engines which will ultimately give you more sales. The bad reputation that SEO has, comes from the fact that no-one can guarantee any position on Google using SEO. This combined with the fact that often you have to invest thousands of pounds before you see any sort of result. To the business minded people, this is ridiculous and too much of a risk.

For the companies that do invest in SEO, the results can be great, if completed correctly. However many many (many!) times I have spoken with companies who have had their fingers burnt with SEO in the past.

So what are the alternatives?

Alternatives to SEO

Let me get this clear now, this post hasn’t been created to give you a list of all possible alternatives to SEO, it is to make you aware that there are alternatives out there which can be more effective, depending on your industry. A few examples of these are:

• Social Media
• Blogging

With both of the examples above, the search engines come to you. A friend of mine, The Internet Marketing Guy mentioned this to me about a year ago and it really hit home. The point being, don’t chase after the search engines, make them chase after you.

Both of the methods above have one thing in common, quality content. Get the content right and the rest will follow (within reason!).

“I’ve heard good things about video, is this good for promotion?”

Video is a fairly hot topic at the moment as it is seen as an alternative to SEO when promoting your website. Currently search engines can’t read the content of the videos themselves so how are videos good for promotion? The primary reason being that videos are more likely to be linked to than text or pictures. The more links to a particular page the more inbound links the search engine sees and thus a higher search ranking.

In conclusion

If you are already using SEO with your website and you are getting great results, brilliant! This post isn’t to put you off doing traditional SEO. Just be aware that there are alternatives out there which, depending on your industry, work just as well, if not better.

Got any added tips that I have missed and you think are useful when promoting your website?

What is a tablet?

A tablet has been described as a ‘netbook killer’. They are designed to replace the traditional netbook (a low powered, cheaper laptop). Tablets aren’t new, Apple released a graphics tablet back in 1979 and many tablets have been released since. Only now, with ubiquitous Internet access and App Stores available where we can download the latest and greatest application, are tablets able to show their full potential.

Do we need another device?

Some of you may be thinking that we don’t need yet another device when our modern phones already do a load of things already. I do agree with you to an extent, the tablet idea isn’t new and it doesn’t directly bring anything new to the table in terms of functionality. What it does though is provide a new platform for application and web developers to work on. This may not sound exciting however it is, trust me. A tablet may eventually replace (for most people) the daily newspaper. Your tablet will automatically have the daily news on it when you wake up in the morning, no fuss. The tablet allows people to consume media even quicker than before, reading books, listening to music, watching films and catching up on news all from one device.

The alternatives

As touched on previously, the alternatives are netbooks and modern mobile phones. I will be honest, I was tempted by a netbook some months ago however now with the launch of the modern tablets there is now only one choice. For you, however, it may be different. It all depends on what you need it for. If you want to do a lot of word processing than maybe the current crop of tablets aren’t for you.

Every morning when I wake up I always check my phone, checking up on any latest news and also my Twitter feed. This works well and means I only have to carry around one device which is small enough to fit in my pocket.

In conclusion

With the recent rise of the Internet and the power it now has I can’t see that tablets WON’T be a huge part of daily life in the future. The ability to replace a lot of ‘old technology’ with modern technology is just too good an offer to pass up. How do you see tablets in the future?

What you need

Before we start you will need the following:

• A Google Account
• Basic business information (name, website, contact details, description)
• Additional information such as images, videos, opening hours, business categories
• A little time!

Now I am going to assume that you have a Google Account, if not, get one, I’ll wait…

Adding your listing

Your first port of call is the Google Places website. If you haven’t created a listing before you will be prompted to add a listing by filling in all of the information on the form.
As you move through the process of adding a new listing you will be prompted to add additional information such as opening times, payment methods accepted, photos, videos and your business location.

What’s next?

Once your listing has been added, (and verified by yourself and Google) the next time you login to Google Places you will be greeted with a pretty graph and statistics which will give you information about how well your listing is performing. Improving your listing is down to you keeping the information current and ensuring that the categories you have added your listing to are still relevant. If applicable you can also add coupons to your listing which will encourage users to investigate further and perhaps get in touch.

After a short while your listing will start to appear in search results for users, as you can see as an example to the left. The listings shown come from the listing you have just added and are randomly ordered based on the location of the user.

Voila! You are near the top, if not the top of Google for free in a relatively short amount of time!

Earlier this year, Pingdom released a post on the blog platforms of the top 100 blogs. WordPress came out top with 27% of the top 100 blogs. This just proves how powerful WordPress is for a blog, but what about a full website?

WordPress as a Content Management System

WordPress is becoming an unofficial standard for creating websites on a budget which can be edited using a Content Management System (CMS). I wrote a post last year about the need for a Content Management System which mentioned WordPress as a CMS. Ask any designer, whether print or web and WordPress is bound to have come up in conversation as part of a full site.

WordPress is brilliant, sometimes

Let me say that WordPress is brilliant. We still use it for many customers sites which lend themselves to the features that WordPress can offer. WordPress gives the designer the power to create truly beautiful sites with all the power and control of WordPress. So how is WordPress bad?

WordPress starts falling down if you don’t have any knowledge of HTML and/or CSS. The knowledge isn’t needed to make changes but it is certainly needed if the changes don’t go as well as you thought they might go. Many, many (many!) times we have been contacted by clients who have made a change to their WordPress site which has broken the formatting or layout of the page and it needs fixing. Most of the time it is a small fix in the code, however without knowledge of HTML, the client can’t fix it. The main reason for this is if the site isn’t integrated properly, with proper separation of the content and the layout, the site becomes a nightmare to maintain.

Now before people jump on that last comment and come at me with pitchforks and torches, let me clarify.

If done right WordPress sites are manageable however they still offer too much control and power for a client who doesn’t want the hassle. In these cases a custom or alternative CMS would suit but it all depends on the clients needs.

What do you think, is giving too much control and power to a website owner a bad thing?

The role of Dreamweaver and WYSIWYG

First, let me explain what WYSIWYG means. It means What You See Is What You Get. This covers all sorts from full blown web development software to being able to add formatting to a recent blog post you have penned. WYSIWYG is good in principle, it allows users to format their content correctly and produce pieces of work which they wouldn’t have been able to produce without the help of this software. Most Content Management Systems use some form of WYSIWYG software to give more control to the user.

Dreamweaver (and similar software) take this idea one stage further and allow people to build full blown sites. I don’t have a problem with this at all, in fact I would encourage it if a client wanted to create their own site and manage it themselves. It allows the client to get exactly what they want without relying on a third party.

“A little knowledge is dangerous”

The real issue is when websites are created for clients using this type of software. Designers who use this type of software generally lack high skills in understanding HTML and CSS. This type of software also traditionally creates lots of unnecessary code which only slows down the website. Quite a lot of the time the code produced doesn’t confirm to a uniformed standard and may not look right in certain browsers. To solve this the designer/developer must edit the code manually, thus defeating the point of the editor in the first place! The designer also lacks complete flexibility and control over every aspect of the site. For example creating complex CSS code is near on impossible without editing the code manually.

What does this mean for the client?

1. Broken or incorrect looking site in different browsers
2. Slow loading website, affecting search engine ranking
3. Higher costs in maintenance fees when changes are needed to the site
4. Potentially poorer quality websites affecting number of visits and revenue generated through the website

The list above just outlines a few points to take notice of when having a website created. We have seen the issues first hand related to point 3 above. A client came to us asking for some basic changes to their site. The quality of the code was so bad (in this case it wasn’t a Dreamweaver site) that it actually worked out cheaper to rebuild from scratch than it was to make the modifications!

Employing the services of a website designer who lacks advanced knowledge of HTML/CSS is like employing someone who can use Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher to create your promotional literature. You may get an okay result however when modifications are needed outside of the scope of the software, problems are sure to arise.

The alternatives