When choosing a web design company for your next redesign or project, there are many factors to consider. One important factor which shouldn’t be overlooked is the web design company’s conformance to W3C recommendations.

We decided to do a follow-up to a 2005 study conducted by our friends over at Happy Cog Philadelphia concerning the HTML and CSS validity of Philadelphia area web design companies’ homepages. That study found a majority of these Philadelphia web firms were not following the W3C’s HTML and CSS recommendations.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded over a decade ago by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who originally invented the World Wide Web. The W3C’s goal is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. These guidelines or “web standards” are important for a multitude of reasons, including faster page loads, easier site maintenance and accessibility for disabled users. (For more information on why you should be using these web standards, visit webstandards.org)

Of the 42 companies we’ve compared, only 3 had both clean HTML and clean CSS. Those companies are WebLinc, Happy Cog, and Advance Web Design.

When you hire a contractor to implement that beautiful new design for your home’s remodeling, you’d expect the design to be constructed in a manner compliant with modern building code practices and standards, right? Why wouldn’t you expect the same from your web design and development company? If your web vendor does not include web standards in your specifications documentation and final site output, it may be time to ask questions.

This study in no way implies the mentioned companies are not capable of creating beautiful designs for their clients, nor themselves. Rather it is the implementation of the design that comes into question here.

Please refer to the W3C validation tool for the most up-to-date validation information. If your company is listed above and you’d like to update your site’s status here, my email is jferry [at] weblinc.com.

*Update: 4/27/07 Electronic Ink’s homepage now validates.