How can I tell if my site isn't up to standard ?

Many professions and industries have standards. With some professions, like medicine or law, you need a qualification before you even start doing it. Other industries, like food processing or construction, aren't so strict about academic qualifications, but they do have standards that have to be met - like health and safety or food hygiene standards.


There's no academic qualification you need in order to become a web designer. All you need is a computer with internet access and the confidence (or in some cases arrogance) to call yourself a web designer.
However, although many people (and most web designers) don't know it - there are standards for websites.
What's more - it's really easy to test your website to see if it's up to standard. All you need to do is visit a website (http://validator.w3.org/) and you can test your site.

What are Web Standards?

Websites are programmed using a computer language called HTML. There's a right way to program HTML and there's a wrong way. The right way to program HTML is called "Web Standards," anything else is the wrong way.
The difference between the right and wrong way to program a website is technical - so if you're a business owner you don't need to understand the details.
However, you do need to understand that if your web designer hasn't used Web Standards it means:

• Your site will do worse in Search Engines - so you'll get less visitors
• It will take longer to download - so you'll lose more of the visitors you do get
• It could cost you more to maintain the website
• It's harder (and more expensive) to make changes to the website
• Up to 40% of people might not be able to see your website properly because they use different type of computer or web browser than your web designer.
• Your site is probably not going to be accessible to people with disabilities - which could mean you could fall foul of your local disability discrimination laws

Of course, you might not have all these problems if your web designer hasn't used Web Standards - but you'll certainly have some of them.