Selling Web Standards

Posted on Friday, March 9th

I'm a member of the WSG. That's the Web Standards Group from Australia. The group is basically a mailing list of various conversations that are supposed to be about Web Standards. I started out as a large contributor of feedback and ideas, but then became more of an occasional poster after the same conversations came up again and again.

Typical topics like "Why doesn't my site look right in IE?", "XHTML vs. HTML" and many more come up time and time again.

Another frequent topic is "Selling Web Standards". What this means is the act of explaining to clients the difference between an amateur designer who has no clue what he or she is doing while making websites with Frontpage, and someone who has spent a great deal of time and energy obtaining a mastery of HTML.

Of course you want to flaunt your knowledge. You want to separate yourself from the masses.

Here's my response to the topic as web designers around the globe argue about the best way to waste an hour or so of a client's time trying to explain this crap:

"...This is a discussion that continuously reappears on this list.

I've been down this path myself and these days agree with those who say not to bother selling the standards to people. They really don't care. Sorry. I spent many meetings with clients trying to explain what standards are, and the only thing they are interested in are any tangible benefits. If you cannot focus on benefits, don't waste your time.

In my experience:

Clients do care about SEO, but don't care about screen readers.

Clients do care that google can whip through clean code, butt don't care to know what tag soup is.

Clients think that it interesting that javascript image buttons with "javascript:" in the url screw up search engines etc, but don't care for the technical explanation.

Clients don't care that the 25 nested tables don't validate, but do care that it takes 5 times as long to make a minor change on that type of page.

Clients think its cool when I press CTRL+SHIFT+S in firefox and remove the presentation layer to show them what the search engine sees, but they don't care to learn the difference between presentation, information and behavior.

As a designer/developer you want to try and separate your self from your competition, especially if they do crappy work. A long speech aimed at educating the client is a nice thought but in practicality a waste of the client's time.

Point being, we're not selling standards here. We're supposed to be selling quality websites that are well-coded and accessible to a variety of audiences. Following standards is simply the recommended way to do so. Save the education for a brochure to hand them if you insist on drilling the concept into their heads..."

I've found over the years that we web designers often look at ourselves as evangelists. Evangelists for new technology, for all Flash websites, for no Flash websites, for Firefox, or whatever else. We look at ourselves as heros, fighting the good fight against bad taste on the web, but in reality, we're just working people.

I feel more like a plumber, painter or carpenter than some fancy pants artist. I wear flannels and jeans, not black turtle necks and berets.

Sure, I can design. So can the landscaper. I build sites that follow the standards. Homes are built following standards. Neither should be wasting a client's time explaining their methodology - just do the job right.

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