Standards Matter

Over the past 10 years the website development community has worked together to come up with standards for web sites. These standards make it easier for web sites to be managed and modified. A new website design can be implemented less expensively by modifying a few files rather than every page in a site. Websites developed to standards are also easier for people with disabilities to use and come up higher in the search engine rankings. Any good developer will base his or her work on the current standards and best practices. At Libertytec, we proudly subscribe to this philosophy.

Compliance

Over time, the increasing complexity of the Internet has raised new issues of privacy and liability. Every web site needs to have the two following items:

Privacy Policy

This document describes what information is collected from visitors and how it is used.

Terms and Conditions

This document gives information about the website content and how visitors are and are not permitted to use it.

Recently, business websites have been found to fall under the Americans with Disabilities Act. This means that users who have vision problems must be able to browse a web site correctly with a screen reader. If a website is not built correctly, this can open the business to a legal challenge. See the sidebar for more information.

E-Mail Newsletters

Any email used for commercial purposes falls under the Canned Spam Act. This act provides fines for businesses that send email without first having someone’s permission. Another thing to worry about is blacklisting. Even legally compliant emails can cause an email provider to block emails from a certain company. If a large email provider does this, many customers will be prevented from receiving any emails from that company.