It might seem like you don’t need to know any type of programming to put up a website, even an e-commerce website. Actually, if you’re going to spend the money to put up a web page, you’ll want to make sure the person who works on your site knows HTML, especially for an e-commerce website. All it takes is one incorrect HTML tag and your customers’ personal data gets sent through an insecure browser connection. Internet savvy potential customers will not submit an order through a website connection that isn’t secure.
Advantages of valid HTML coding
With valid HTML coding, your website will display correctly on any browser your customers are using. Occasionally, one version of a browser will allow incomplete HTML coding, but once the browser is updated, the website stops working correctly. For example, when Internet Explorer was updated from version 8 to version 9, many websites came up as incompatible for those who were using the latest version of Internet Explorer. By not using browser specific coding, these types of issues happen less frequently.
Proper indexing tags
When you launch a website, you might not originally think about those with disabilities looking at your site. You might not think about people looking at your website through a SmartPhone. With the right HTML tags, your website will display correctly in both these situations. Image tags will describe any image to the visually impaired, or describe the image to someone viewing your website through a SmartPhone.
Keywords and content
With valid HTML coding, updating your website will be much easier. If you want to add products to your e-commerce site, you’ll find it much easier if your website has valid HTML coding. If you want to add a newsletter on your website, you’ll find it’s easier to update with valid HTML coding.
Other reasons for valid HTML coding
Valid HTML coding on your website will cause fewer loading problems with your website. Your website will load more quickly with valid HTML coding. All page elements will display correctly. If the code is not validated, you’ll find that some browsers will display the website incorrectly. Other browsers will load more slowly, while the browser attempts to interpret the HTML coding. With invalid HTML coding on your website, your site can be considered incomplete. If your website is loading slowly, your customers might click away to another site, that is coded correctly and loads more quickly.
Invalid HTML coding on your website may cause broken links as well. These broken links can make it look like your website is incomplete, even if page elements display correctly. Sometimes, search engines use links within the site to determine where to rank your site in searches. With invalid links, your site may not show as highly as you wish on search engines.
Search engines have a difficult time interpreting websites with invalid HTML coding. When web pages don’t display correctly, search engines have trouble finding keywords on the pages. Invalid HTML coding can keep your website from showing up at the top of search engine results.
