RezStream’s design department is eager to share helpful tips about how to get the most out of your website. Our main topic this week is CSS (cascading style sheets) website designs. While the benefits of CSS driven websites are undeniable, those advantages are not always clearly understood. Let’s explore the key benefits of updating your website to a CSS driven one, which loads faster, is visually more appealing, and is more efficient for the search engines.
What is CSS?
CSS or “cascading style sheets” is the preferred web design method for a variety of reasons. CSS is used to specify the layout and presentation of the basic browser language, HTML or XHTML. CSS then allows web developers to separate the content that is written in (X)HTML, from the presentation, written in CSS. CSS is placed outside of the (X)HTML document, which keeps the document shorter and clean, better for search engine optimization (SEO), site performance, accessibility, user experience, and investment.
Benefits in the Search Engines:
Extracting the presentation code from the document means the search engines can more easily find and index your web pages, as their code is cleaner, shorter, and denser in content. Remember that web content is critical to search engine success. Search engines don’t spend a lot of time crawling through all your web pages, so it is essential to know that search engines consider content at the start of your document to be the most important. In that context, placing notable content at the top of the (X)HTML document is extremely beneficial, rather than bogging down your pages with markup that is meaningless to the search engines.
Superior Performance:
Table-based website layouts must load all of the code each time a page is opened. Adding to that, browsers read tables twice (once for structure and once for content) before they can render them. These types of websites also wait to display the entire table, so you see the entire page, rather than piece by piece. On the other hand, CSS driven pages not only have much smaller file sizes because they require less code and images for layout, but developers can also control the order in which items are downloaded to the screen. This superior control also allows developers to make more important elements, such as content, appear first before less important elements, like images, appear. The bottom line is that when pages load faster, your website visitors are pleased with a more positive online experience as they obtain your web content more quickly and efficiently.
Better Accessibility:
Separating the style from the content also makes your website more accessible to visitors who prefer to view only the content of a page, want to print the page, or perhaps use a screen reader to interpret the page.
Higher Consistency & Browser Compatibility:
Before CSS websites, it was very difficult to keep presentation qualities the same on every page of a website, often only possible using frames, which don’t function well in the search engines. With CSS, web developers can position elements and navigation menus consistently across the entire website. CSS can also target specific browsers to increase your websites ability to be viewed the way you intend, regardless of what browser your visitor is using.
Easier to Make Changes:
CSS makes it straightforward to make changes to presentation elements, as the style sheet can be edited to formulate a change throughout the entire site, a savings of time and money. Conversely, with a table-based layout, the change would need to be made on every single page, which also leaves your site open to probable inconsistencies. In addition, it’s possible to alter the entire look of a website just by making changes to the CSS file.
Increase in Scope of Viewers:
There is a growing need for websites to be well suited for different media. CSS is the solution for this, as CSS is already compatible with PDA’s and mobile devices. Developers can also create style sheets for presentation on certain media that will be called up in place of the regular style sheet, a practice that isn’t possible with a table-based layout. The more people you can reach via a variety of sources, the better it is for your bottom line.
Conclusion:
RezStream’s design team has presented these helpful tips on the benefits of CSS websites. If you haven’t already upgraded your current website to CSS format, now is the perfect time to make the change and RezStream can help!
If you are interested in a new website design or a fresh redesign, explore the expertise of RezStream’s design department. We specialize in custom website designs and content management system websites. Our knowledgeable staff would be happy to answer any questions you might have about a website design that would work best for you. Call RezStream today at 866-360-8210 or email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
