Website standards

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Mondinos

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Morning everyone,

There might be some post like this one already. Can someone let me know and I'll remove.

I've been pondering on this one for some time now;

Is there a governing body that assist and guide developers on the standards and service delivery with regards to websites in South Africa?

I'm a one with basic knowledge on website designs and tend to spend more time on testing others's site i.e time to load, does it sell a product or just an explosion of animation, etc.

To be frank, it is scary out there...:eek:

As small business owner, I also measure a website in relation to advertising and the cost thereof. For some people it works out more than advertising your product at the cinemas on the big screen for a month!! ... you will sell more.

Any input would be appreciated.
 
Mondinos said:
Morning everyone,

There might be some post like this one already. Can someone let me know and I'll remove.

I've been pondering on this one for some time now;

Is there a governing body that assist and guide developers on the standards and service delivery with regards to websites in South Africa?

I'm a one with basic knowledge on website designs and tend to spend more time on testing others's site i.e time to load, does it sell a product or just an explosion of animation, etc.

To be frank, it is scary out there...:eek:

As small business owner, I also measure a website in relation to advertising and the cost thereof. For some people it works out more than advertising your product at the cinemas on the big screen for a month!! ... you will sell more.

Any input would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

KISS, is important for me as well as i don't want to feel if i'm doing a windows update from scratch.

what it definitely should Not be is something like this
http://dev2.weathersa.co.za/Weather.asp

horrible to say the least
 
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Mondinos said:
Is there a governing body that assist and guide developers on the standards and service delivery with regards to websites in South Africa?

I'm a one with basic knowledge on website designs and tend to spend more time on testing others's site i.e time to load, does it sell a product or just an explosion of animation, etc.

To be frank, it is scary out there...:eek:

As small business owner, I also measure a website in relation to advertising and the cost thereof. For some people it works out more than advertising your product at the cinemas on the big screen for a month!! ... you will sell more.
Click to expand...
In a word, no. There is no standards body - not in SA, and not anywhere else. That, in a big way, is one of the reasons why it is so scary out there, as you put it.

As a web developer myself, and one that sticks to standards, I've been appalled by some of the offerings out there. People pay for those?? :sick:

As luck would have it, I'm busy with a blog post of sorts that targets this exact topic. I just need to add a blog section to my website first... :rolleyes:
 
I would appreciate it if you can keep me in the loop and I'm willing to give assistance where needed.

I'm really dissapointed at the quality of service you get out there. The target is certainly not the sales of the client but more to the designer side at this stage.
 
Yeah, As Raithlin said, and a very big "UNFORTUNATELY" there is nothing like that out there. As a web developer too I also compare, analyse and rip site apart to see what is working and what is not working out there as far as what is better?, speed or bells & Whistles. I think when Flash came out and people start integrating it into their designs, people were very intrigued and fascinated by this. It was totally new and never seen before, so if it meant waiting up to 2 minutes for it to load, it was perfectly fine and that site would have stuck in the viewers minds as it was one of a few. But as time went on, everyone seemed to be using the same technology and trends and soon people were waiting 2 minutes for every site to load and it fun became boring!!!

So... people were then intrigued by fast loading sites again. So the circle starts all over again, we all revert back to plain, simple and basic "Fast" sites. Then Broadband came out and having a flash site did not mean that your clients or targeted audience will have to wait the 2 minutes for it to load. Some people reverted back to Flash or animated sites and others just left there sites plain.

What works better? We can't compare Plain or Animated because they are pretty much the same these days. The only thing is, stick to the basic design principals - Clean, Easy to read, Informative, attractive and easy on the eyes.

When it comes having a web site, the most important thing to remember it that it should be searchable. When I say this, I mean searchable by keywords, not the company name, that is unique and 9 out of 10 time your site will rank 1st if you did search by name. Searchable by keyword, and the best way to achieve this is by using a "Plain" site meaning not only Flash, although google and those big search engines have advanced quite a bit in the past few years and are able to index and rank full flash site but I think not as well at a old fashioned website.

Hope this helps and gives you something to think about.

J
 
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Mondinos said:
Is there a governing body that assist and guide developers on the standards and service delivery with regards to websites in South Africa?
Click to expand...

A belated reply but nonetheless:

The core technologies that make up the web are international standards and there are organizations that oversee them.

HTML & CSS : http://www.w3.org/
ECMAScript: http://www.ecma-international.org/

Is this the type of info you were looking for?

Mondinos said:
I'm a one with basic knowledge on website designs and tend to spend more time on testing others's site i.e time to load, does it sell a product or just an explosion of animation, etc.

To be frank, it is scary out there...:eek:

As small business owner, I also measure a website in relation to advertising and the cost thereof. For some people it works out more than advertising your product at the cinemas on the big screen for a month!! ... you will sell more.

Any input would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

The general quality of local web design and development in this country is still quite low. It can indeed be scary what some people will pass off as a product.
 
FarligOpptreden said:
I could've guessed that Mr. Web Standards would answer the OP :p
Click to expand...
:p
icyrus said:
The core technologies that make up the web are international standards and there are organizations that oversee them.

HTML & CSS : http://www.w3.org/
ECMAScript: http://www.ecma-international.org/

Is this the type of info you were looking for?
Click to expand...
You're quite right, icyrus, but there is no national body that ensures web design companies toe the line in that area - hence the every-man-and-his-dog companies out there making it difficult for us.
 
icyrus said:
A belated reply but nonetheless:

The core technologies that make up the web are international standards and there are organizations that oversee them.

HTML & CSS : http://www.w3.org/
ECMAScript: http://www.ecma-international.org/

Is this the type of info you were looking for?



The general quality of local web design and development in this country is still quite low. It can indeed be scary what some people will pass off as a product.
Click to expand...

Icyrus,

Thanks for the information. My point I trying to resolve is too ... let me put it this way. "We can clearly see this one is SA" you can buy the most expensive car, even with park distance control and still someone dents and scratches it.

The international standards are there and most of us implement them the way we can but unfortunately there is a group within the industry that bunches a few pages together and call it and effective website. Even charging for that c%^$:mad:

I would love to see a body in SA that monitors these things and takes on these chancers. Having a business you need a site that sells your products and sells them better tan e.g an add in the newspaper but that does not happen. 80% of the businesses out there starts with a website and no sales comes from it so they leave it!

Is it not worthwhile delivering a researced, product specific and effective site so that the client comes back to you?
 
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