how effective is promoting 'standards compliant' websites?

what features sell the most?

[LBmtb]

I have yet to launch my business, but upon looking over my website and business plan, I make it a big selling point that my websitse are 'standards compliant.' Along with that I add things like cross-browser compliant and all that goodness.

Do clients really care about the technology behind a website? Maybe it just depends on your specific market? What promoted features sell your services the most?

[rich_b]

The vast majority of clients in my sector (small businesses) have never heard of standards compliancy. However, they do want their sites to work on every popular web browser. Ok, so we know that these two concepts are actually more or less the same thing but the clients don't. So to answer your question, promoting "standards compliancy" may not be very effective unless you describe it in a non-techie way that your clients will understand.

[rich_b]

Sorry - for some reason this got posted twice. Moderators - Please remove this one. Thanks.

[victor]

Go for standards compliant because it makes your life so much easier.

By ensuring there are no bugs in the HTML, you can also be confident that spiders are correctly parsing the pages too.... On the other hand, if you insert bugs in the HTML, then some bugs can stop some spiders; unless you have a very accurate knowledge of what those bugs are, you could be inadvertently removing yourself from some search engines.

Ditto, by being standards compliant, you'll have less remediation work to do when newer platfoms (phones, PDAs, etc) appear, or when existing browsers are upgraded.

Basically, standards are what I do to ensure there are as few as possible barriers between my sites and their market.

[LBmtb]

Yeah I agree completely and all my websites are and will be made in compliance with standards.

But I was just trying to figure how to (and if I should) promote that to potential customers.

I think rich_b might be right about translating it into non-tech speak that highlights things that matter to clients (such as looking good in all browsers).

[larryhatch]

I validate all my pages so I can go brag about it all over the place. -Larry

[johntabita]

There are plenty of good reasons why you ought to use standards, but getting clients is not one of them. I've found that most people do not even know what a "browser" is, much less that there's more than one.

People do not buy websites, they buy results or outcomes. Your selling point must revolve around whatever outcome or result you produce for your clients. Having a website that "works in all browsers" is not an outcome or a result, it is a feature. Now there may be a result to having that feature, but in this case, you first must educate the client about the feature in order for him to even see the possible result. Why not simply focus on what clients are already aware of and already want, such as making more or spending less money, saving time and so forth?

The other thing about standards-compliant sites as a selling point is that it's not unique. Any other firm is capable of matching your "selling point" by also offering standards-compliant sites. The challenge is to find what's known as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), something that sets you apart from the tens of 1000's of others out there who are "selling websites."

Hope that helps.