5 Reasons To Redesign With CSS

Is Your Business Website Old School - 5 Reasons To Redesign With CSS
By Linda Bustos (c) 2007

Many small business owners have a hard time seeing the value of
a website redesign. They believe “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it.” And this is understandable. Unless you are eating,
breathing and sleeping technology and staying up to date with
the moving target of Internet business, you’re not likely to
know intuitively if your site needs a redesign.

And as a small business owner, you may be concerned about the
up-front costs of a website redesign. But once you understand
how a redesign can help you drive traffic to your site, convert
more users and even save money, you’ll feel more positive about
making the investment in your business.

Old School Web Design - Tables-Based HTML

Not long ago, fax machines were the best way to deliver business
documents fast. But now it’s so easy to scan and email
documents, and even capture digital signatures through email,
the fax machine is quickly going the way of the typewriter. With
email, recipients can choose to read and archive the message
online, or print it out themselves on their own desktop printer.
No need for individual telephone lines for the fax machine,
taking up desk space, replacing toner, uncurling fax paper and
listening to screeching fax machine tones!

Tables-based HTML websites are like the fax machine. At one time
tables were the best way to render information on the Web. But
like curled paper and fading ink, tables left something to be
desired. Designers were constrained by tables that allowed data
to be rendered only in tabular form. The clean, professional and
creative layouts today’s best designers create with Cascading
Style Sheets could never be achieved with tables-based HTML.

New School Web Design - Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets separate the presentation elements of a
website (code) from its content (words). CSS allows web
designers and developers to format the layout and style (fonts,
spacing, text size, colors and so on) of multiple Web pages
using one file, rather than entering the code to each individual
page. Making changes to styles and layouts is much quicker and
easier with CSS as well, as updating one file “cascades” the
changes to every page on the site. There is less room for error,
and the website maintains a professional consistency.

But web designers and developers are not the only ones who
benefit from CSS. You as a business owner benefit even more.
How?

5 Solid Reasons To Redesign Your Website With CSS

1. Branding and Aesthetics

Consumer behavior experts tell us that, presented with many
similar product or service options, and little prior knowledge
and experience with these brands or companies, consumers will
rely on mental shortcuts to make purchase decisions. The way
your website looks compared to your competitors has a large
influence on how a visitor perceives your company’s
professionalism and goodwill. If your website looks modern,
crisp and clean, you leave a positive impression on your
visitors about your company.

2. Better Usability

CSS also reduces the amount of HTML code a website requires.
Tables and extra tags for fonts and colors cause pages to load
slowly. The longer it takes for your page to load, the more
likely a visitor will hit the back button. Even though the
majority of people use a broadband connection, many are still
using dialup. And others may be using a high speed wireless
network which, depending on how many others are sharing the same
wireless channel, may experience fast or slow connections.

3. Accessibility

Rapid advances in wireless communications have made it easy to
surf the ‘Net using PDA’s and cell phones. Tabular page layouts
simply don’t display properly on small screens. A business that
wants to be accessible to anyone, anywhere now and in the future
needs to have a website that can be viewed on mobile devices.

CSS design also greatly improves the user experience for the
visually impaired, as they cause fewer problems for screen
readers and Braille programs.

4. Search Engine Benefits

It has been estimated that up to 80% of all purchases online
begin with a search engine. And an entire industry is dedicated
to helping businesses rank highly for specific search terms to
take advantage of the power of search engines.

Although the relevance of a webpage to a search term is
determined by HTML elements like title tags and heading tags,
content is still “king” because visitors are looking for
content, not code. When you have a high code-to-content ratio,
your keyword density (the relative frequency of your targeted
keywords on your page) is diluted by HTML instructions for how
tables, fonts, styles and colors should be rendered. With CSS,
there are no tables, and formatting information is contained in
one style sheet. So search engines see more keywords and less
code.

Search engines are more and are more likely to index deeper
pages of your site and send you more referral traffic.

5. Bandwidth

Cascading Style Sheets can save you money and increase the
number of eyeballs that see your page in other ways. “Bandwidth”
refers to how much website traffic your hosting company will
allow you to have each month. Because every time a user lands on
your site, he or she must load your pages in his or her browser.
Not only visitors, but search engine spiders consume bandwidth
too. The more code your pages have, the more bandwidth you use.

If you exceed your bandwidth usage, your site will be suspended
until you buy more bandwidth or reach end of the month. Suppose
your site receives a sudden surge of traffic shortly after a
popular magazine features your company. That would be the worst
possible time for your website to go offline! CSS makes for a
more efficient use of bandwidth, and reduces the chances of such
problems.

So Are Tables Taboo?

Absolutely not. There are bona fide reasons to use tables to
display certain types of content. The beauty about CSS is that
you still can use tables when you need to, but you don’t need to
use tables for everything which significantly reduces your “code
load.”

How Do I Know If I’m Already Using CSS?

A quick test to see if your site is using CSS is to load your
website in your browser (any page will do). Right click anywhere
in the window, and a menu box will appear. Click “View Page
Source.” You should see keywords like rel=”stylesheet” or
type=”text/css” near the top of the window that pops up to view
your source code.

If you’re already using CSS, there may be other ways your
business could benefit from a website redesign. Driving traffic,
improving the customer experience, making your website more
accessible to users and saving time and money on webmaster
updates make it well worth the investment. Whether you choose to
redesign now or in the future, make sure that your web designer
and developer are skilled in CSS.
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Linda Bustos is the Marketing Director for Image X Media, a
Vancouver web design (http://www.imagexmedia.com) and Internet
Marketing firm (http://www.imagexmedia.com/internet_marketing).
She also blogs about social media (http://smogger.wordpress.com)
and business.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.