Without a doubt, the majority of websites I encounter are either poorly developed or often incomplete. As someone who spends a lot of time on the computer, hitting a poorly implemented website immediately gives a bad impression, and causes me to subconsciously rank not only the website, but the person or company behind the website.

Here are a few things that ever website owner should look for.

Install A Favicon On Your Website

So many websites still don’t have a favicon, which causes many browsers to show a default (aka crappy) icon instead. It looks really unprofessional, especially when your site’s lack of favicon is contrasted in a bookmark list with a group of sites that do have a favicon. If you don’t have the ability to create one yourself, don’t worry — there are many websites that will generate one from a JPEG or GIF for you. Once you’ve generated your favicon.ico file, you can simply install it in the root directory of your website, and it should automatically be picked up.

If you’re a bit more web savvy and want to put your favicon.ico file in another location, you can — you simply have to add a special tag to your HTML document to let the browser know where it’s located. For example:


<link rel="shortcut icon" href="[http path]/favicon.ico"></link>


If you have a WordPress theme, you can add the following code to header.php to have it look in your theme directory for the favicon:


<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/favicon.ico"></link>


Ensure Your Website Validates

Under the hood, every website is simply a collection of XML/XHTML/HTML tags that instruct web browsers how to render the page. Those tags are defined by a specification such that all content producers will produce comparable tags, and all browsers will render those tags in (ideally) the same way. For example, those specifications say that an IMG tag can have a ALT attribute, but it can’t have a FOO attribute.

There are many web designers and development firms who insist that proper validation of a website’s HTML structure isn’t required. The main argument I’ve heard is that the benefits from making a website properly validate against W3C specifications do not justify the efforts required to ensure the website validates. From a development perspective, I’ve never understood that argument. Once you know how to make a site validate, it’s very easy to develop at full speed while writing valid HTML markup.

An analogy I’ve used in the past relates to golf. Yes, learning how to properly swing a golf club takes time and effort. But once you know how to properly swing a golf club, it doesn’t require any extra effort to play the game. You simply carry that knowledge with you around the course and play a better game of golf.

Almost all validation errors I’ve seen in the real world are in the area of accessibility (for example, not providing an ALT tag for images). What that means is that people with certain disabilities are going to have a hard time navigating your site and understanding the content. Do you really want to alienate some of your readership by not spending 15 or so minutes to bring your website up to specification?

There are many plugins for popular browsers that show you the state of validation of a website in real time. The one I use is called Tidy for Safari. The Tidy plugin shows a real-time count of the HTML validation warnings and errors on each page. In the example photo, there are 32 validation warnings.

If you’re looking for a great resource for website validation, check out the official W3C validator.

Adding a favicon and fixing up the validation errors on a website would probably take most people no more than 30 minutes of time, and would remove a few negative aspects from their website. Not only would the site then be a properly validating HTML website, but it would potentially allow it to be viewed by a larger audience, namely people with disabilities.

You can do neither and still have a great website. But to me it’s like walking into an interview with a big stain on your shirt or a hole in your pants. Sure, maybe you’re a rock star and you’ll still get the job. But why take chances?