Why Adopt Web Standards?

Adopting Web standards makes good business sense

A commitment to support Web standards is an important action towards implementing good business practices. Web standards provides:

  • lower development, maintenance and network costs
  • improved usability and accessibility
  • sharing of content and applications in multiple contexts
  • works with all popular technologies and software platforms

This is sufficient for creating a business case supporting adoption of standards. But making the case for standards to constituent groups may be helped by more detail and context.

The Web Developers' Point of View

Web standards allow for better code by enabling separation of concerns: data, presentation and behavior. Better coding reduces development and maintenance costs, increases code reuse, and allows the benefits of specialization.

  • HTML, XHTML or XML markup for content and semantic structure
  • cascading style sheets for visual design and device formating
  • JavaScript for application behavior and user interface enhancements
  • quality assurance and testing

The Users' Point of View

Web standards make web documents more accessible to all types of users and machine agents, and more visible to search engines. Standards compliant Web resources:

  • are readable by all browsers and user agents, and more accessible for all users
  • personalize and optimize presentation with style sheets
  • documents are smaller, resulting in faster page loads
  • search engines index content more effectively
  • semantic Web technologies provide context and improve quality of search results, knowledge delivery and data mashups

The Webmaster's Point of View

Web standards will ease the burdens of webmasters by allowing them to focus more on content and less on design and development issues. Following standards makes Web administration easier and improves user experience.

  • Web standards can be implemented in all content management systems
  • consistent document template markup allows site-wide style sheets
  • site-wide style sheets allow incremental design changes and flexibility
  • automation of processes allows repurposing time, and better uses your professional skills
  • JavaScript-based technologies are applied site-wide for consistent user and application interaction
  • accessibility and usability are more easily accomplished and maintained
  • standards supports assistive technology

The Decision-maker and Stakeholders' Point of View

Using web standards reduces the costs of development, maintenance and operation of web sites. Standards-compliant sites are more efficient and cost less to maintain.

  • management of information architecture, content, and design is easier and lowers costs
  • shorter redesign cycles
  • smaller file size reduces bandwidth costs
  • structured content improves search engine results
  • automation of processes reduces cost and improves quality
  • publishing system can comply with legal requirements and provide alternative reading formats (e.g., RSS)
  • useful life of content is increase through reuse