What does it mean to be W3C-compliant?

Qualified webmasters and web designers will know what W3C compliance is about. So what is W3C compliance?

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and since 1994 (that's way back) the W3C has provided the guidelines by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. They set the standards by which best practices in web design are defined and followed through according to the type of coding used, whether it's HTML, XHTML, XML (blog feed), CSS etc.

If not for W3C standards, nothing that you read on screen would be intelligible. One of the main challenges that Tim Berners-Lee, the so-called Father of the World Wide Web, had to face up to and solve during W3's formation is to ensure interoperability and that data is not lost in translation as they are presented on-screen.

It is still quite a big issue among webmasters today. From personal experience, I had encountered webmasters who designed sites without thinking how people would view them in Firefox. If you don't care for web visitors, you lose a market share, simple. (Part of the problem is that proprietary features that do not conform to any existing W3C specifications are designed into popular browsers, so life become very difficult for those of us attempting to create websites that look good across most, if not all, browsers, platforms, mobile devices, screen sizes and resolutions and overcome most types of visual disabilities.)

From a digital marketer's point-of-view, when designing a website, you need to bear in mind that visitors ONLY respond in 3 ways:

1) To click on a link.
2) To opt-in.
3) To purchase something.
4) And only 1 ACTION AT A TIME.

The last point is terrifically important. I recall seeing a website with black background with lots of links, blinking graphics and bright banners. It reminds me of Las Vegas. If I fly to Las Vegas for the first time and not knowing anything about the place, I wouldn't know where to start enjoying myself. That's the problem with such sites. Everywhere is a shout, yet there is still no obvious call-to-action.

I'm coming round a full circle to say that Inbound marketing* cannot break away from W3C compliance even as the webmaster may not realize this. A W3C-optimized website will score highly in user experience and lead conversion. Business website owners must consider 2 points for website optimization:

1) Have a goal in mind for what you’d like to accomplish with your website.

2) Make it easy to be understood and crawled by search engines, i.e. the colours are not all over the place, the layout is not messy, the HTML code is not bloated or excessive, the one single message on the current page is clear etc.

Thus the principle is: the more obvious a call-to-action is, the more clarity a website design must have. It must simply scream, "DO THIS", and nothing more. When a site is made simply, I presume it cannot veer too far from W3C specifications.

Is your website optimized for lead conversion? Is your call-to-action loud and clear? If you are not sure that your website is generating the right amount of targeted leads, click the graphic below and ask for a free website assessment. We accept your request as a challenge and are glad to help!

* Inbound marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves SEO, Social Media, blog and landing pages to generate sales leads.