Website Design is a relatively new industry, so it is important for web designers to keep track of the latest fashions and trends, not to mention the latest web standards. If you didn’t already know, the world of website design standards is recommended by W3C, which is an abbreviation for the World Wide Web Consortium.
At this present time, abiding by w3c standards is very much a voluntary action, but with search engines such as Google now taking the consortiums recommendations into consideration when ordering listings, it should be at the forefront of any designers mind to build their sites in accordance to the said recommendation.
The following List will helps to outline certain website design standards that will ensure your websites are meeting a quality benchmark.
1. W3C XHTML Compliance
It is important to use valid code for your website design as this will allow pages to load faster, reduce the risk of errors, and ultimately make your website more search engine friendly.
2. W3C CSS Compliance
Again, the importance of applying valid CSS will mean achieving cross browser compatibility will be easier, and websites will load faster.
3. Table-less Layouts
Using tables for page layout should certainly now be a thing of the past; but for anyone designing websites in this way, you will be producing far more code than necessary and slowing down the page loads, harming search engine performance.
4. Cross Browser Compatibility
Ensuring that your website design looks exactly the same across all major browsers will reduce the risk of your website looking un-professional and ultimately driving people to leave in search of something else.
5. Navigation / Sitemap
A clear navigation, preferably at both the top and bottom of the website, will ensure that not only visitors, but also search engines can find their way through your website.
6. Titles and Alt Tags
If for some reason, images don’t load on the page, then having alt tags and title tags will indicate to users what should be sat in this position, and can still find their way around.
7. External Styling
The introduction of external styling is now some years old, and removes the messy addition to your source code, brought about by bulk, multi-defined inline styles. Using CSS, will improve your page load times and performance with accessibility and in search engines.
8. Text Re-sizing
When increasing the size of text on your site, it is important that everything has the capability to handle this. Text sizes, line heights and containers should be capable of handling the change, and expand accordingly.
9. Using Flash Elements
Flash is very much common place in modern website design, but it would certainly be recommended to only use embedded flash elements as opposed to building whole sites in Flash. This will hinder usability and performance in search engines. If you really need to build a website using only flash, be sure to replicate the sites basic look and feel for HTML version.
10. Using Valid Characters
Ensuring that you HTML mark-up correctly places special characters will avoid any unsightly symbols from appearing on your website.
