by: Karen Blundell
Since I made the switch 6 months ago to a tableless design on my main site, I’ve noticed some interesting things:
Let’s look at why my search engine rankings improved. Now that I have less un-indexable code on my pages, the search engines can now spider my site quicker. Less code, more content, therefore a better ranking. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Bandwidth costs money, and unless you have a really good hosting plan with lots of bandwidth, then your larger files will take up more room on your server, and take a lot longer to load. Tableless designs use up considerably less bandwidth and are more accessible.
Every once in a while I may want to alter the look of my site. I like to change font colors, link colors, menu items, etc…Before I started using tableless designs, these changes took me hours to do. Now I just open up my stylesheet, make the changes I want, and in a few minutes I have my site updated with the new look and feel. It’s so easy!
For a client who wants to make their own changes, tableless designs could literally save them thousands on tech costs.
Most of my clients still want sites with tables. I now give them the choice of either style. After all, the customer needs to be happy, right?
Some people have the misconception that utilizing tableless designs means having a boring and less graphical site. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Take a look at one of my favorite websites: http://www.csszengarden.com/. At that site you can really appreciate what can be accomplished through css-based tableless designs. Beautiful!
So make the switch to a more profitable, usable, and accessible website!