Web site validation is one of the hidden secrets of effective web design. Even though validation has been around for a long time and readily available, it is under utilized. Part of the reason is that when you start to design your creative site, the last thing on your mind is: does my site validate? Somewhere along the way of designing graphics, layout and content, we say goodbye to html standards and hello to whatever looks good in our web browser. So before we go any further, let’s make sure we understand what validation is.

Validation Defined

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), validation is a process of checking your documents against a formal Standard, such as those published by the W3C for HTML and XML-derived Web document types. But validation is really more than that; here are some of the benefits:

Validation is Good Practice

A good writer looks over their paper when their done, a best-selling author reviews their work meticulously making sure that everything is just write and the way they want it. They look at it through the eyes of their publisher, their readers, their critics–through everyone. As a web site designer, that’s exactly what you need to do.

Validation Ensures Quality

By validating your site it improves and ensures quality. Since users are using a growing number of web browsers to surf the internet, it is more rare than common that your site looks the way you think it does. By validating your web site, you make it look better more of the time.

Validation Makes Your Site Google Friendly

Everyone wants to be Google’s best friend. If you can get lots of visit from Google, you’ll get lots of visitors from everyone else. When you validate your web site, it gives you a better picture of what Google sees when its spiders come to your site looking for information.

Validation Creates Accessibility

Mobile users, blind users, and a whole range of new users are visiting your site more than ever before. In order to make your site accessible by as many people as possible, you want to take the time to validate your web site. This will boost the friendliness of your web site.

Validation is Free

Finally, validation is free. The WC3 allows you to use tools on their web site to validate your site for free. Take advantage of them, it may just give you the edge that you’ve been looking for.