Urban Element takes careful steps to ensure that a client's website is compliant with any applicable UK law including the Data Protection Act, E-Commerce and Distance Selling Regulations and the Disability and Discrimination Act.
The W3C are an organisation that set the standards for professional web developers and how a website should be made. Urban Element adheres to these guidelines for all our websites. This may not make a huge difference visually to a website, but it certainly will do in the future. By sticking to these standards Urban Element ensures that a client’s website is future proof as browsers and technology change. Websites will by default be:
- Extremely Search Engine Friendly
- Accessible to not only search engines, but also people with visual and other impairments, and the maximum number of people across a wide range of browsers and devices.
- Future proof against changes in technology e.g. mobile device
- More easily updateable
- Faster download times
Before a user can process content or usability, it is design that helps form those vital first impressions.
It makes Commercial Sense:
“There are 10 million people in the UK with some form of disability - that's about one in seven of the population. If your website isn't accessible you could be turning away potential customers as well as falling foul of the law.”
Disability Rights Commission
“We think it makes sense to have an accessible website. This means that internet users who have visual or motor impairments can also experience the pleasures and benefits of the worldwide web"
"With a combined disposable income of around £50 billion a year it would be crazy to turn this business away"
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
"According to a recently released Comscore study on Mobile Internet Usage in Europe - Mobile Internet usage is higher in Europe than The United States"
"It shows that 29 percent of European Internet users within the aforementioned countries regularly access the Web from their mobile phones compared to only 19 percent in the U.S.”
http://www.w3.org/Mobile/
Browser Compatibility
The top current browsers, by usage percentage currently in use, are listed below in Table 1:
2008 |
IE7
|
IE6
|
IE5
|
Fx
|
Moz
|
S
|
O
|
|
April
|
24.9%
|
28.9%
|
1.0%
|
39.1%
|
1.0%
|
2.2%
|
1.4%
|
Table 1 - Browser Statistics April 2008, http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Design templates are always developed alongside constant testing in these browsers to ensure maximum cross browser compatibility so that the maximum number of users can view a client’s site no matter what computer or browser they are using.
Where exact functionality cannot be made completely cross browser you will be consulted on any major compromises that need to be made that may affect user functionality. Where possible we will ensure that any browser issues will ‘degrade gracefully’ and not affect the user experience. Although not listed in Table 1 Urban Element will also develop the template to be viewable using the Apple Safari Browser which will ensure cross platform compatibility.