CSS and Web Standards: Why Your Business Should Care About It

Because you care about how your business looks online. That’s the outright answer and the simple truth. But it isn’t always obvious to the business owner or decision makers who may be savvy about the online experience, but aren’t necessarily aware of the nuts and bolts that make the online presence of their businesses tight and stable. Take the case of Bernard.

My wife and I run a small artisanal shop. We produce what think are the best fruit preserves this side of the United States. People can stock up on cookie butter all they want but they’ll always crave for real, honest-to-goodness, homemade fruit preserves on their buttered toast to reassure them that their day will turn out right. We’ve always relied by word of mouth to move our products and we’ve been successful, so far. But when we realized we could save so much more on logistics by using the Internet to multiply the word of mouth effect, we knew that this was the way to go. We want to hire a designed to do our web page. Eventually we want to be able to sell our products online. The problem is we know next to nothing about the work that the designer is going to do for us. Friends tell us that if the designer follows web standards strictly we’ll be getting our money’s worth. But what are web standards. This thing they call CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, what is it really?

– Bernard

Don’t despair, Bernard, because you’re not alone. Many small business owners who need to establish their presence online are on the same boat. Here’s a simple primer that will help you get started with understanding CSS and other web standards.

CSS are the mechanism through which changes in appearance and position can be assigned to HTML or XML elements, simply by declaring that they are of a specific style. The overall appearance of entire sites can be defined with CSS. To remodel the appearance only the CSS (not the individual elements) need to be changed. Any changes applied to the style sheet of an element type cascades to all elements which have been tagged as belonging to a specific style. If CSS is implemented on your web page, it’s easier to make changes and the turnaround times are faster, too.

CSS belong to a group of protocols called web standards that ensure your web pages will be accessible to almost any type of user (including those with impairments and disabilities) and will display properly on any device, fixed or mobile.

Web pages that comply with these standards are easier to search, because its structure is easier for search engines like Google to understand. These compliant web pages also tend to perform better, load faster, and are future-proofed against newer web technologies. They’ll always be understood and displayed properly without special maintenance needed.

The article Web Standards Project (WaSP): Buzzing for Small Businesses in the Wild Web is an excellent resource to help you understand the importance of web standards such as CSS to small business websites.

By Nestor Gilbert

Nestor Gilbert is a senior B2B and SaaS analyst and a core contributor at FinancesOnline for over 5 years. With his experience in software development and extensive knowledge of SaaS management, he writes mostly about emerging B2B technologies and their impact on the current business landscape. However, he also provides in-depth reviews on a wide range of software solutions to help businesses find suitable options for them. Through his work, he aims to help companies develop a more tech-forward approach to their operations and overcome their SaaS-related challenges.