Web Standards, anyone?

29 May

I was thrilled over the weekend to discover that I have been awarded a gold medal by the Australian Webdesigners Network for my business website. Nice, I appreciate it. Though I was far from being the only one to receive one.

This led me to check out what other web design awards are out there and who’s winning them. I was dismayed to find that most of the awards had nothing to do with web standards, usability or accessibility (the criteria were pretty basic) and so I didn’t bother submitting any of my sites to them. Then I checked out the now-closed Web Standards Awards. I’ve seen most of the winners before either through CSS Vault, Style Gala or CSS Beauty. A good number of the winners are the business or personal pages of graphic or web designers, so there’s no surprises there.

The Web Standards Awards closed up shop when they felt that the Gospel According to the Web Standards Organisation had spread to enough web designers. Sure, there are many web designers out there, too numerous to mention, quietly or not-so-quietly (e.g. Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, Dave Shea, Cameron Adams) working away on websites that not only follow web standards but look good as well. Hurrah for web standards developers!

The problem that the current state of the web poses for commercial web designers such as myself is how to communicate to potential customers why choosing a designer who follows web standards and understands usabilty and accessbility is important; as opposed to going with some “backyard trader” who learned web design from a Dummies book and produces something the customer thinks is good enough for probably no less than what some of the leading designers do. I came across many a site today plastered in web design awards that made my head hurt. But a small business owner who knows nothing of the web would see differently – they have many awards, they look cheap, they’re good enough. Or they find the sites by graphic designers who also learned HTML from a Dummies book or basic HTML course. The site looks GREAT so they must be the best. And so the infection spreads. Of course, either of these options could result in a perfectly fine website that adheres to web standards but how does the customer know this and do they know enough to care?

In a small attempt at giving useful advice to potential customers (admittedly, it’s probably in vain given that I would, of course, be biased) I wrote a list of things to look for when selecting a designer (under Confused about which web designer to use?). There are services out there that provide such advice for lay-persons when looking to buy a house or select a plumber or a lawyer, maybe we need one for the web design service industry? If such a service exists, I’d love to hear about it and I’ll link to it from this site.

By the way – when I say “adhering to web standards”, I don’t necessarily mean a web masterpiece with all the Web 2.0 bells and whistles; I do NOT want to join the design vs. un-design debate. That’s a whole other ball game.