1 Tie it to the pocketbook

Well, speaking semi-officially as a VP at a big American interactive shop, I can tell you that there’s really only one strategy that ever works, ever—tie it to the pocketbook. And you have to tie it to the pocketbook as a PROFIT center (additional natural-search traffic; other suggestions welcome), rather than as a SAVINGS center (theoretically reduced operating costs.)

That came across as preachy, but it’s the only way I’ve ever had any success at all evangelizing use of standards to the people that control the purse strings. Either that, or you fib and say that standards-compliant design won’t cost any more than “as-is process” design. There may be some shops where that’s the case, but I have yet to see one.

I’d love to hear other ideas on how standards can be articulated as a profit center (reduced cycle time for changes means opportunities are capitalized sooner, meaning more spondulix in the client’s pocket?)

posted at 11:06 am on May 29, 2007 by John Young

3 Better across the web

I have certainly noticed huge leaps forward recently in the number of commercial websites that are following good practice, which look they have been designed by the kind of businesses you’re referring to here.

There are definitely more people out there who have got the message that a standards-compliant design isn’t more difficult (in the long run) or more expensive, and are churning them out as a matter of course.

I don’t blame these companies and professionals for not contributing to blogs and web fora – I don’t sing about my day job when I’m not at work either! What we need to do is to ensure that their good work receives wider recognition, to somehow show the nay-sayers that it can be done, and it is being done. But how we go about this … I’m not sure either.

posted at 11:31 am on May 29, 2007 by Stephen Down

4 Back to the clients

That’s a really interesting stance, although I’m not convinced it’s the large web companies or their staff that need to be persuaded of anything. I certainly don’t think it’s a problem with the lack (or not) of people contributing to the web standards movement from large companies.

I suspect the only way that large web companies are going to be any more motivated by web standards is if their clients demand it.

When clients start demanding (or expecting) web standards, then I predict the majority of large web companies will suddenly become more ‘proud’ of using web standards and actively promote them. You’re right: then the developers who have never heard of standards or have previously rejected them just won’t have anywhere to hide.

So how do you make web standards important to the average manager commissioning a web site from a large web company? John’s got a good point “tie it in to the pocketbook”... or you can scare them with tales of browser incompatibility and getting sued over accessibility issues ;)

Ultimately though, I think this is a situation that is improving. I think more and more people are embracing web standards. Perhaps now it’s just a matter of time and patience…?

posted at 11:48 am on May 29, 2007 by Robert Swan

5 I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree...

I think the way to promote standards is to tell the companies that don’t follow standards why it’s important to you (as a customer, preferably) that they should fix their site. I think that this method becomes more relevant as the number of non-compliant sites falls.

Another prong in the attack should be to tell laymen (friends, colleagues, anyone who will listen) that there such things as ‘web standards’ that we, as designers, should follow and if a site doesn’t seem to work correctly, there’s a chance it’s not following standards. Let them know that they should tell site owners when things don’t work.

posted at 02:26 pm on May 29, 2007 by Hal Step

6 Untitled

I’d love to hear other ideas on how standards can be articulated as a profit center (reduced cycle time for changes means opportunities are capitalized sooner, meaning more spondulix in the client’s pocket?)

I know that working in my job making things standards compliant helps in my turn-around in getting a new product launched. By separating the style sheets and making pages in good semantic layouts I can easily re-use that content for another product.

So by doing a little leg work ahead of time, and by now it really is a small amount of time, I can save myself a lot of time in the end.

I don’t know how huge companies work, but I know from working in a decently sized one that sells high-end PC’s that it all depends on the person actually putting the content up there.

My boss doesn’t necessarily care if I make all my pages Standards compliant, he just cares if it looks good and gets all the content across that other people want.

However by doing pages with more and more standards compliant elements in them he has slowly come around. And now whenever someone creates a page, or submits content they’re expected to give me all the elements that would be needed to make the page standards compliant.

And like some others have said, the way to make companies who don’t adhere to standards take notice is by not buying from them and telling others. I know now whenever I go to a site to buy something and I see something that’s blatantly obvious to not being standards compliant I usually don’t end up purchasing from them. If it’s really bad I try sending an email to whatever email is on their site, who knows if it actually gets to the right person, but it still makes me feel better.

posted at 03:07 pm on May 29, 2007 by Matt Huertas

7 What about mega-huge?

If you’re considering 30 or more to be a large company, then what do you recommend to folks that work for a company with thousands? I’ve been evangelizing to my healthcare industry employer about standards and accessibility for close to two years and even making little mini-project strides here an there. There’s so many layers and so much inefficiency endemic to an organization of this size (47 thousand employees) that I feel like Sisyphus. I’m about burnt out and just want to go back to agency work with a small but talented team.

I’ve written up a number of “our standards” type of documents to try to get some sort of buy-in or approval from management. The real problem in my situation is that there is no one identifiable stakeholder at the top aside from the CEO (and he’s already shown he’s justifiably not nearly as concerned about Web issues as he is about healthcare issues). Outside of him, the “Web strategy” is drafted by multiple regions, multiple physically-separate departments and a number of “e-Committies.”

For what it’s worth, in the US, the government considers 50 to 200 employees to be a medium-size company. You’re not classified as a “large” company until you top 200. A quick Google search shows that this business classification is the same in the UK. Business strategy and economics is different for small, medium and large companies.

Ironically, it seems as though agencies that come in to consult seem to have more influence over the collective mind of the stake-holders. But the ones that we’ve hired have been marginal at best at demonstrating that they understand Web standards, semantics and accessibility.

PS PPK: Thank you for this article. Extra thanks for all the info I’ve gleaned off of quirksmode for all these years. Your hard work and sharing of information is appreciated in bucketfulls.

posted at 04:45 pm on May 29, 2007 by John Lascurettes

8 Embed Standardistas with the Clients

I agree with Swan’s comment above. I’m a web producer for a multi-channel retailer. When margins are thin, resources are tight and strategy is a moving target, web-standards become a “nice to have”, but unfortunately not a requirement. It’s a depressing realization for those of us on the inside, who may be the only web-standards-literate people within our organizations.

For me the opportunities are few, but planting the seeds of standards-oriented thinking pays off when it comes time to shop for an agency. At that point we can push hard for an agency or developer that has a track record of standards-focused design. Coming from the inside, it sounds like a project requirement. Coming from an agency, it may come off as another way to pad the fee.

A bit of advice: Educate your clients. Preach the gospel at the middle-level of their organizations – people like myself who don’t hold the purse strings, but may be able to influence opinion. We are going to be tasked with maintaining the work in the long-run, so we definitely have some skin in the game. And a few years down the road we probably will be the people signing contracts and hiring developers.

posted at 06:01 pm on May 29, 2007 by Matt Pritchard

9 Missing something ... Universities?

In my own experience, most of the people I have worked with in the web dev industry are not formally educated. Whether my anecdotal experience is mainstream or not, I don’t know, I’d be interested to see some stats on University Educated (e.g., Majored in Web Design or Graphic Design) vs. on-the-job or self-taught. Personally, I hold a B.FA in Graphic Design, and I received a great deal of course instruction in “Web Design” (keep in mind, I just graduated this year), yet couldn’t find a job as a web designer, turned down left and right until I came back with some Standards-designed (which I had never heard of) portfolio examples. I think that a major front for this movement should be industry putting pressure on colleges and universities to update their curriculum. I graduated from a US News & World Report top THREE technical University, and they’re still teaching Tables from the 90’s and antiquated Photoshop techniques. Get to the students, and in one generation you will see much more change than via a guerilla blogging campaign.

posted at 07:14 pm on May 29, 2007 by Peter Uzzi

10 Re: Universities…

My education is from a two year school (a community college) that had a fairly up-to-date web development program, yet still lacked an adoption of web-standards. We learned hand-coded XHTML and CSS (which I already knew), then went on to learn Dreamweaver and Photoshop, etc. One of my professors emailed me and asked for suggestions because they were working to improve the program. I told her a focus on standards and a bend towards the web and away from multimedia in general would be good. (Or to offer a track for graphic designers as well as one for Web designers.) The program focused too much on multimedia, including training in Director, Authorware and Premiere, and not enough on the web itself.

It wasn’t until after school that I started to become involved in the standards movement and learned what I know about semantic markup, standards-compliance, etc. And it wasn’t until I had developed a complete portfolio (instead of the table-based designs I had created in school) that I was able to get my foot in the door and actually start making some money doing web design.

The problem with teaching Web design in schools is the cost of updated software and literature. Although I think it is safe to say at this point there is no excuse for not teaching XHTML and CSS and the importance of standards. My school has asked me to come speak to students in the web program about my experiences and I think my goal will be to encourage the students to set themselves apart by adopting a standards-based approach to web design.

posted at 07:30 pm on May 29, 2007 by Aaron Burrows