When you visit a website and it’s filled with awesome graphics and has an intense layout, have you ever right-clicked and viewed the source of that page? The site may look good, but under the hood it may be a mess. Unless you’re a developer, you probably will not be able to tell what is “good code” and what is “bad code”. Let me fill you in a bit.
Valid code and semantic markup is extremely important to MixxCreative when we code your site. One of the reasons why it’s so critical is that it allows search engines to crawl your website faster and more efficiently.
Clean code plays an important role for screen readers and makes your site more accessible to larger audiences such as individuals who are hearing, motor skilled or cognitive impaired. It also allows your site to be accessible to a wider range of devices such as mobile phones and text browsers.
Let’s use an example. On this blog you will see a picture of me at the bottom of each post that I write along with a short bio. Semantic markup would say that the picture of me should mention that it is a picture, or avatar. Viewing the source you will see this:
<div id="entry-author-info">
<div id="author-avatar">
...
</div>
<div id="author-description">
...
</div>
</div>
It accurately describes what the content inside the container is about.
Another upside to having clean code is speed. The faster your site performs, the better user experience your visitors will have. Tests show that if your page takes longer than 4 seconds to load (broadband connection), you can lose up to 33% of your visitors.
Maintenance becomes less of a hassle. We may not revisit certain code for months and when we do, it’s easy to make changes. MixxCreative comments our clean code so we know what does what and what goes where. What’s the benefit? Less time searching means less cost on maintenance.
The next time you’re amazed and awed by a website, make sure you view that source and see if it’s all that it’s cracked up to be. Clean, valid and semantic code is just as important as the design it accompanies.
