The new website for Renova developments designed by robot creative based in manchester and built by myself to W3C standrads using semantic XHTML and CSS is now live.

The redesigned montage website was put live last Thursday and is already seeing an increase in sales and better search engine rankings.

Ii am currently undertaking a project at work to improve web standards on all websites and to improve natural search engine rankings on our eCommerce websites. This is a brief outline of the project and reason for using web standards.

Project Aims

The project can be broken down into 2 main aims:

1. To create best practice guidelines for Otto-UK websites which adhere to current web standard guidelines.

2. To use web standards to improve organic SEO, usability and accessibility.

Why web standards?

1. Code Efficiency:

The larger the files are, the longer they will take to download, and the more bandwidth they will use. By separating content for styles and using good clean semantic xhtml and efficient CSS we can save on bandwidth and provide customers with faster loading, more efficient pages. It also allows code to be re-used more easily across the sites.

2.  Ease of maintenance:

By separating style and content any change requests can be carried out with minimum of effort. By using well coded CSS, site wide changes can be made by changing the minimum amount of code and can therefore be completed quicker. Standardising the layout of pages and stylesheets for each site will make working on different sites easier and quicker and will also allow promotions be rolled out across each site  with minimum effort.

3.  Accessibility and usability:

Web pages created using web standards mean better accessibility to customers with disabilities and users of alternative devices such as screen readers. An accessible site also complies with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). There are 8.5 million disabled people in UK meaning a potential 8.5million more customers to an accessible website. A site coded to web standards will also aid usability.

4.  Search Engine Optimisation:

Using semantic xhtml for mark-up and following best practice guidelines will allow for better organic SEO. Well-coded web pages make life easier for web crawlers. Correct use of meta tags, pages descriptions, headers, keywords etc in the development phase of web pages will greatly improve search engine rankings by default.

5. Mobiles and devices:

Because the content and styles are separate it will be easy to create dedicated mobile stylesheets if the requirement is there. Use of mobile devices for Internet access is on the rise and shouldn’t be ignored. Device specific stylesheets can be created easily should there be a need.

6.  Good practice:

Using current web standards for developing websites is good practice and helps to future proof the sites and make future development both quicker and easier.

You simply can’t call yourself a web designer until you have read this book on web standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. If you want to create functional, effective sites while shaving development costs and complying with accessibility laws then this book is for you.

The guy from the Golf GTI advert doing some more crazy liquid robot dancing.

To celebrate the launch of Firefox 3 the guys over at Mozilla are trying to set a Guiness world record for most software downloaded in24 hours.

You can help make the web a better place pledge your support here