Developing With Web Standards

At Sensible Web Solutions we eat, sleep and live web standards. All of our websites are built using web standards as standard (yes, that's a bit of a mouthful but it's true).

That doesn't simply mean that we're happy with a big green tick from the W3C Markup Validation Service, that's easy to achieve. What we do is build all of our websites with semantic markup in mind. That simply means that we use XHTML to apply meaning to our web pages. Not just any old XHTML but valid XHTML of course.

Compatibility & Future-Proofing

This not only makes our sites cross-browser compatible and cross-platform compatible but it also makes them future-proof. They'll work in multiple devices on multiple operating systems, including mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone and other non-standard devices and user agents (web browsers). This means that all Sensible websites are accessible websites out of the box.

Accessible Websites

Website accessibility is very important. Individuals with certain disabilities can use special software (i.e. screen readers) and equipment to browse the web in different ways to those of us without disabilities. Designing one site for sighted users and an alternative site for visually impaired users is not the way forward. Something like 1 in 20 men are colour blind - and there are numerous variations of colour blindness - which obviously affects what they can and can't see on the screen.

Lightweight Code = Performance + Reduced Bandwidth

Because we've separated content (structure), design (presentation) and function (behaviour), our sites are lightweight and fast loading. This is especially important with more and more people browsing the web over mobile and cellular data networks such as 3G. You'll save money too on bandwidth costs with your web hosting providers as your website traffic will be reduced for the same number of visitors hitting your website.

Findability & Search Engine Friendly Code

Any website built by Sensible Web Solutions is a dream to Google and other search engines. When their search bots (or robots) span our sites they are fed content heavy code. The content-to-noise ratio is significantly reduced because we use no presentational markup, only semantic markup - allowing the Googlebot to quickly establish the subject of each page on your website. Google will also span more of your web pages within the time that it has allocated to your website. You'll see improvements with your Google ranking even before you've begun to think about search engine optimisation.