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Wouldn't you like your gallery's site to have a bigger reach, to touch a wider audience?

Sometimes support to achieve your goals comes from sources you expect the least. These organisations are considered 'revered web institutions'. Because the web evolves so fast, they seem to come from another age and are systematically overlooked.
And yet, they play an important role in your gallery's web strategy.

 

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is one of them

It sets the standards for the HTML and CSS syntax on web pages. Its core mission is to help keep web sites free of errors in coding and programming, such as missing alt image tags, unclosed tags, unrecognized parameters, incorrect use of elements, etc.

 

A lot of sites don't seem to bother about these glitches

It looks as if many programmers who are familiar with W3C consider it old fashioned. Others are not even aware of its existence.

As a result more and more websites are loaded with glitches. So many in fact that the web is packed with sites that don't even meet the requirements of proper coding.

To prevent the spread of defective sites the W3C has developed a special tool: the W3C validator.

 

As an art dealer you are not supposed to be web savvy

You rightly trust your programmer. You brief him about your requirements for your gallery's site, explaining what 'things' it must contain or be able to achieve without adding much else. Because you don't know. Not even enough to provide a 'basic standard' to which he should work.

As everybody else you want your site, your update online soonest. No more, no less.

 

W3C validation tests are rarely performed

Programmers concentrate on coding that challenges them and forget the most common things.

Today, most programming has become a copy/paste routine hastening up their job. There is simply no time to look after the errors and glitches in a site’s source code.

So, a W3C validation test to ensure that your site will respect the rules is rarely performed.

 

At first sight your gallery's site works like a charm

But when you look it up in different browsers or operating systems, you notice a lot of unwanted differences. If your programmer tells you there's nothing you can do about that, it's a sure sign that you should have a closer look.
You don't pay for a gallery's site that is unresponsive to potential visitors.

 

True, your site must not necessarily come 100 percent error-free

The errors and warnings detected by the validator rarely affect web pages to such an extent that they don't show up as expected in the browser of choice.

Does W3C validation affect your ranking in the search engines result pages? No, not at all. W3C compliance has no impact on a site’s search rankings.

Will these errors prevent your gallery's site from showing up? No. Even if your gallery's site counts a myriad of HTML and CSS glitches, the spiders will index your pages and their content.

Will validation bring more visitors to your site? Or increase its reach? Ah!

The next three paragraphs will help you understand the reach of an important aspect of the validation process.

 

There are some major advantages as a result of the validation process

Did you ever test your gallery's site on different browsers? Testing not only allows you to see how your site looks in different browsers, it reveals all the differences, big and small. Some of these are caused by glitches in your HTML or CSS code.

The first advantage of the W3C validator is to secure the browser compatibility of your gallery's site.
A validated source code assures you that your pages will show correctly, because your source code is 100 percent compatible with every browser.

But even more important is the consequence of this compatibility: the overall usability of your gallery's site.

Validation gives you the guarantee that your gallery's site will be fully functional for a wider audience, such as the growing number of mobile users for example or visitors who subscribed at your RSS/feeds.

 

Validation is only part of the overall quality of your website

Considering validation of no importance is like selling works of art made of inferior materials or with inferior techniques. It's an integral part of your gallery's integrity. Presenting a validated site is critical to your gallery's reputation. It increases the credibility of your gallery's site. And of your gallery.

 

Consider the whole picture

How you present your gallery makes the reputation of your gallery. If you already pay attention to what is considered 'a secondary detail', it simply indicates how professionally you handle your gallery on all levels.

 

 

Luuk Christiaens

 

In the next article we have a look how to use the 'validated page' approach as your programmers' baseline standard.

 

Or do you prefer to look up another article first in the Back Room?