What Is W3C? Web Design Standards Explained

W3C is a web design standard founded by Tim Berners-Lee. The W3C was established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS). Today the standard supports many organizations, companies and professionals in website design. MONA Media will help you understand, in web design, what the W3C standard is in the article below.

What is the W3C standard?

World Wide Web Consortium is the full English name of W3C. The standard is designed for websites in general so they are more compatible with each other. It gained even more value once the HTTP protocol was developed. Most websites today are designed to the W3C standard.

W3C helps professionals web design set direction for building and developing their websites. Large websites on the market all value this criterion.

The W3C standard is a way of guiding website development. Basically it is the underlying part of the design process and has nothing to do with how the website looks. So only web design professionals tend to care about it.

To know whether your website meets the W3C standard, you need to run a check. After checking, you can contact a web design company to upgrade your site to the W3C standard.

What are the steps to design a W3C-compliant website?

When you understand what W3C is and what the standard requires, implementation is more effective and accurate. To build a website that meets all W3C criteria, you need to know the implementation process, which has 4 important stages:

• Stage 1 – Working Draft: This is when you build the first draft of the website, define the layout, content flow and feature list, and check whether it meets the basic technical principles of the W3C standard. The clearer the draft, the smoother the later refinement.
• Stage 2 – Last Call: Once the draft is detailed enough, you refine the interface, content and technical components. At this step, the website is checked against reference templates and related standards for consistency before the formal proposal is submitted.
• Stage 3 – Proposed Recommendation: After completing the website, you compile the technical elements and solutions you applied into a Proposal, then send it to the W3C Advisory Committee to review how well it fits the standard.
• Stage 4 – Candidate Recommendation: This is the last step, where the committee reviews the website and decides whether it is recognized as meeting the W3C standard. 

How to check whether a website meets the W3C standard

Checking a website against the W3C standard is actually very simple. You can do it quickly in a few steps:

• Step 1: Go to the website: http://validator.w3.org
• Step 2: Copy the URL URL of the website you want to check against the W3C standard. Then paste it into the address field.
• Step 3: The elements of the website will be displayed. Just review the elements shown.

Why design a website to the W3C standard?

A W3C-compliant website is usually rated very positively by Google. Thanks to its optimized structure and fewer technical errors, Google can Google index quickly and gives such pages ranking priority over pages that do not follow the standard. In addition, the W3C standard brings many benefits in web code, such as:

Safe code that avoids accidental errors during design

During web design, developers can make accidental errors. These errors usually go unnoticed in testing, but their consequences can later stop the website from working properly. By following W3C standards, you fix the basic, avoidable errors that arise during design.

Technical errors not only worsen the experience but also give a poor impression of how much was invested in the website. Google may also mistake them for malicious code that affects rankings.

Website optimized across different browsers

Google now raises its user experience criteria. The W3C standard helps browsers stay in sync and display different content more easily, so users can browse more comfortably. With a W3C-compliant design, administrators also find it easier to optimise the website, SEO website.

Faster page load speed

Page load speed also improves when a website is designed to the W3C standard. Google cares a lot about page load speed. W3C-compliant websites usually have a lightweight structure and are processed efficiently, so pages load noticeably faster. This is a big advantage as Google increasingly favors fast websites.

See also:

• How to check your website speed accurately and quickly
• 10 ways to help speed up your website

What to note when designing a website to the W3C standard

Designing a W3C-compliant website takes care and a well-organized process. Without attention, designers easily make small mistakes that have a big effect on optimization and on how the site's quality is judged. Here are the common errors to watch for.

Missing alt attribute on img tags

The alt attribute is important for supporting a website when it loads slowly or when images fail to load. Instead of seeing the image, users see the alt text in its place.

From the ALT attribute users understand what the image shows. Also, when the image and alt text are both shown, the content is more closely related. The alt attribute makes SEO website easier. Images without an alt attribute cannot be optimized for SEO. The alt text usually contains the main keyword of the article.

Duplicate ID values

ID and class work similarly, but an ID should be used only once per element. Using duplicate IDs not only violates the W3C standard but also makes the website run less than optimally and harder to manage.

Google also does not rate pages with unclear source code structure highly. If you need to experiment, you can use libraries or coding practice sites to test before applying it to a real project.

Using special characters

Some special characters such as < > / & cannot be written directly in HTML. They need to be encoded to display correctly on the page. Many character libraries already exist, so you do not need to memorize them all. When you need one, just look it up and use it.

If these special characters are not encoded, they cannot be displayed on the page. This is a basic error that visitors have little patience for. Google now uses the user experience as a criterion for rating websites, so if you do not optimize this properly, your site will not be rated highly.

Using the href attribute on the a tag incorrectly

A single missing space in the href attribute of an a tag can cause an error on the site. For example, <a href=”link 1″ target=”_blank”> link 1</a> will be flagged as an error. To fix this code, add an underscore (_): <a href=”link_1″ target=”_blank”> link 1</a>. When you design a website to W3C standards, these errors are reported to you so they are easy to correct.

Not telling inline elements and block elements apart

• “Inline elements” are tags such as img, a, span, and so on.
• “Block elements” are tags such as div, p, br, and so on.

To code more professionally, businesses and developers need to distinguish block elements from inline elements. An inline element cannot contain a block element, while a block element can contain inline elements. There are plenty of programming websites, source code libraries and developer communities, so you can check several sources to learn the difference between inline and block elements.

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What is the W3C standard in web design? that we shared above will be useful for developers who are new to the field. It is an important web design practice for optimizing your site, improving SEO, improving user experience and raising your Google ranking. We hope you bring your website up to W3C standards as soon as possible.