As an online business, operating your online presence within the regulations and law is of utmost importance; for multiple reasons beyond avoiding the wrath of the law… are you taking the necessary steps to protect your company website? Beyond your website looking good there are several considerations which must be addressed for your website to ‘stand up in court’.

The Disability Discrimination Act

First and foremost, how accessible is your website? The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public; online, this means that businesses must ensure that they make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to their website to ensure that users of all abilities can access it. The Sydney Olympic committee was successfully sued for $1 million in 2000 by a blind man for its failing to provide an adequately accessible website. Although an Australian case it, along with similar cases in the American courts, demonstrates that web accessibility is not an issue to be ignored.

The Web Accessibility Initiative outlines the essential components of web accessibility; providing guidance and best practice standards for creating an accessible website.

Copyright

Along with the website architecture your content and text requires careful consideration. Copyright theft is a common occurrence that can easy happen by mistake, and is a crime which can result in costly legal proceedings. When populating your website always be certain to never copy or incorporate any text, images, videos or music from another website without obtaining the permission of the owner. To do so would amount to a breach of copyright and make your business liable for damages.

Further issues can arise when commissioning third parties to produce copyright work on behalf of your company, for example photography or video; unless specifically requested you will not own the copyrights in that work therefore limiting what you can do with it.

If material on the website is copyright then to inform visitors and to prevent such material being copied notice should be clearly posted on the company website informing users of their rights.

Companies Trading Disclosures Regulations 2008

The Companies Trading Disclosures Regulation 2008 defines that every registered company must display on their website the following;

• the part of the United Kingdom in which the company is registered;
• the company’s registered number;
• the address of the company’s registered office;

The E-Commerce Directive

The E-Commerce Directive was implemented in the UK in 2002 with the aim of harmonising the rules relating to online trading and advertising throughout Europe. It applies to companies providing online services for remuneration, and extends to services, which are not remunerated by those who receive them, such as those offering on-line information or commercial communications, or those providing search, access and retrieval of data (BIS).

The Directive follows a ‘Country of Origin’ rule which broadly means that a company need only comply with the laws of the country within which they are established. So, in the occurrence of a legal action jurisdiction will lie with the country the company is established not the customers country. However, if a business advertises or transacts with consumers out with the EEA the Country of Origin rule no longer applies and jurisdiction could potentially lie with the customer’s country.

Company’s looking to only transact within specific countries should display warnings that your website is only directed at users within said countries, and companies transacting and advertising to countries out with Europe should be aware of the potential risks they face.
The E-Commerce Directive further defines that any company or person providing a society service must “in a form and manner that is easily, directly and permanently accessible” provide customers with the following information;

• The name of the service provider
• Geographic address of the service provider
• Email address and contact details of the service provider
• Details of any registration in a public trade register or of any authorisation scheme
• Details of membership of any professional body for certain regulated professions; and
• The VAT registration number

Terms and Conditions

If contracting online then the E-Commerce Directive states that  the company terms and conditions must be made available in a way which allows a user “to store and reproduce” them. Within the terms and conditions should be the aforementioned copyright notice, disclaimers, a privacy statement and a disclaimer of liability for any information contained in another party’s website accessed via a link on your site.

Moderation of user generated content

If your website has any area where users can post information or content then moderation will be required. It is the responsibility of the webmaster to ensure that your website does not contain any libellous or damaging material; therefore it is important to consider the impact the content you and your users post has on others. Several cases have arisen from websites displaying malicious content or where owners have not correctly moderated the content, the most recent being the Google bosses being convicted of privacy violations. And in another instance a blogger in America a defamation lawsuit brought against blog Skanks of New York for the defamatory and libellous statements made about model Liskula Cohen.

So…

The points listed here, really are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the legalities, regulations and codes of practice a company should consider and adhere to when operating online. Digital law is a constantly evolving arena and one which every e-business should monitor but the basic business principles and ethics remain the same as offline so if you can establish and maintain them, then your half way there!

“Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.” – Jeff Atwood

Wednesday’s blog post introducing the jCaps plugin (which aims to provide accessible captions for HTML5 videos) sparked an interesting discussion with John Foliot on Twitter the other night.

John brought to my attention the WAI’s Media TextAssociations specification, which will tell browsers how to associate alternative content with rich media, such as video. Little did I know that while I was developing a “home-made JavaScript solution” (which the spec is specifically designed to counteract), the task force was carrying out a meeting to move the spec forward to the testing and implementation stage.

If there’s a W3C endorsed spec which will handle the issue, then great! My concern, though, is the length of time it will take for the specification to be implemented by browser manufacturers. Even if we’re only months away from a spec, it could be much longer until it is reliably implemented.

So in a similarly self-aggrandising way, I’d like to propose McCollum’s law: “If a browser feature which should exist, doesn’t, someone will write a javascript implementation.”

Witness the excellent jQuery UI library. HTML5 provides a datepicker element, a slider element, and native drag and drop functionality, but until these elements are natively supported across the majority of browsers, we’re stuck with home-made JavaScript.

Finding the right compromise between pragmatism and idealism is essential for modern web development.

What are your thoughts? How do you find a balance? Should jCaps development proceed, or should we wait until standards catch up?

Future of Web Design (FOWD), Glasgow – Part one.

Three of the 360 development team were excited to get the opportunity to head off to the FOWD event held yesterday at The Glasgow Film Theatre. The schedule featured an array of highly regarded Web Evangelists and Developers from the names such as Opera, Microsoft and other well know independent web agencies from around the UK.

The morning sessions were delivered by edgeofmyseat.com developer Drew Mclellan, Microsoft developer Mike Tautly and Fuzzy Orange developer Matt Gifford.

Drew Mclellan on – “Making Your Content Discoverable with Microformats”

Drew’s presentation was based around the practical uses and benefits of Microformats, which are perhaps most easily described as a ‘simple set of data formats that help share common meaning and data that goes beyond standard HTML’ – for example: an address or event information.

The presentation was really well structured and provided an interesting, practical insight into the value of how and why microformats should be used in the process of marking up web pages.

You can read more about microformats from microformats.org or visit Drew Mclellan’s blog for musings on a wide range of things Web.

Mike Tautly on – “Silverlight and Expression Blend”

Mike’s presentation was again interesting and one which gave us some background and usage examples with the Microsoft alternative for delivering RIA for the Web. Platform and Browser independent Silverlight is a plugin which builds on the Microsoft .NET framework.

As a designer often looking at how to improve workflow from initial sketches, through prototyping to production artwork; Mike’s outline of Expression Blend provided interesting options to effectively demonstrate ideas to a client using something called a SketchFlow prototype.

It seems Expression Blend is also pretty useful when needing to show interactive page flow and behaviours in prototype format – this can then be built upon to the point of detailed production graphics using Photoshop layered files, with reusable components.

All in all – perhaps one to take a further look at.

For more information on Mike Tautly check out his personal blog

Matt Gifford on – “Getting Started with Adobe Air”

Matt Gifford it seems was drafted in to step in to the breach after a colleague couldn’t make the conference – he did a great job! And along with free Kinder Eggs and T-Shirts Matt gave all us Adobe Air novices an hour long insight in to the possibilities with Air for building and deploying RIA’s.

Some of the most interesting elements of the presentation for me included the integration with web content, applications and data stores (such as mySQL DB’s) in real client situations.

For more information on Matt Gifford check out his blog.

Being the big fans of accessible web design that we are, we are very happy to learn that we have been recognised as an accessible web designer by the Guild of Accessible Web Designers.

To celebrate we have put together a collection of interesting accessibility related articles:

Essential Components of Web Accessibilty by W3C

Accessible AJAX forms with JQuery by John McCollum

Access all Areas by Laura Davis

Usability makes business sense by Isabella Chan

Designing your applications for usability by Devsource

Content managed systems and web standards by Jim Byrne

Web accessibility and the law: is your website legal? by Trenton Moss

Your getting plenty of traffic onto your website but very little sales…. so what’s going on?

Various factors can influence a users commitment to purchasing, a report published by Econsultancy revealed that one in three online users do not shop online, 30% cited a lack of trust being the main reason, 20% cited concerns over personal security and 15% said they did not trust the company selling online.

Safety First

Gaining the trust of the customer and ensuring complete security of their personal details are two main factor which can lead to higher conversion rates.

Some best practise methods to employ that can help gain the trust of the consumer are as follows:

Clearly display your terms and conditions, 55% of shoppers now refer to the T&C’s before making a purchase. (Econsultancy)

Provide accurate and up to date information on the company returns policy.

Always provide adequate contact details including a customer service hot line.

Having some form of customer feedback facility adds credibility to your company and its products or services.

Always use a reliable and secure Payment Gateway service and ensure that this means of payment is clearly communicated to the customer.

The design and layout of the website can also have an influential impact on how trustworthy a company is perceived.

Usability Factors

As usability guru Jakob Nielsen says; “On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave.”

So what potential usability issues could deter a customer from making a purchase?

Bad site navigation, very easily a customer will get irritated and leave a website due to their inability to move easily through a website and find the product they are looking for. If a site is difficult to use people will leave and find another that is easy to use, simple as.

50% of searchers land on the homepage of an ecommerce website (DoubleClick), make sure that the homepage does not take an eternity to load and avoid splash landing pages.

Poor search facilities can not only irritate users but could potentially direct users to the wrong products. Ensure your search facility is in tip top condition, it is a vital tool for many customers and if the search process is lengthened by a lousy search form or bad results then the customer will go elsewhere.

Content

Content can be another tricky area which again requires a level of simplicity. Keep it simple and include only information the user needs.

When it comes to selling your product if you are retail then remember that ordinarily a person would be in the high street buying this product- they can pick the product up, touch it, feel its texture and see its dimensions, selling on the internet has the disadvantage of not being able to offer this. The best way to overcome this is to offer as much information about the product as possible, provide various images at a variety of angles and provide sizing.

This principle applies to business ecommerce websites even more so, in general business transaction tend to be higher in value therefore the risk for the customer is greater and the purchase process will be longer and more calculated. Providing as much detail and support information as possible will help the decision making process, in your favour preferably!

Avoid using too much jargon! Obviously if your business nature requires the use of technical terminology and the customer will be accustomed to such language then it is a different story. However, at all costs it is best to avoid using complex language and if you cannot avoid it try to include some form of glossary to help shoppers to understand what you are talking about.

Access for all

Accessible web design is a must for any website, by not making your website accessible to all you could be excluding many customers from using and buying from your website.

See our blog post Access All Areas for more detail on web accessibility.

The main transaction

During the actual shopping transaction it is not only security concerns that deter many shoppers, 67% of web shoppers click out of shopping carts before completing purchase (Net Effect) and one of the main reasons is often due to the filling out of forms.

Having to constantly fill in details forms each time a user returns to a website can be very off putting, to encourage loyal and returning customer use a log in functionality that remembers customers details.

A form error is one of the main reasons a person will exit a transaction without finishing it, not only does it lack credibility, it is time consuming and it can be very annoying for users; if any problems occur with a form on your website contact your web administrator immediately and have it rectified asap.

Further to this transactions are being abandoned left, right and centre because of the type of checkout process being used on site, using a traditional checkout process where access to all the other website pages are still available makes it very easy for the customer to stray back to product searching within the website. Having an enclosed checkout has proven to increase transactions, it takes customers to a separate checkout facility where all distractions (menu bar, search facilities etc) have been removed, reducing the likelihood of the customer changing their mind. Having such a checkout facility also reinforces the security aspect of the transactions and makes it easier to communicate the payment methods and terms and conditions to the customer.

Finally, you and your product!

Lastly, and most importantly, your company, the product/service and customer experience being offered must be worthy of purchase. No matter how much you improve your website if your product quality and customer service isn’t up to scratch then its unlikely any customers will return, and loyal customers are the most profitable kind. They will return to your company time after time, refer others to you, and spread good words about you, and word of mouth is the best kind of marketing a company could ever get.

Accessibility is a very important yet often disregarded area of web design. Accessibility authorities are few and far between, one of the main being the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the W3C. The W3C works towards ensuring every person regardless of disability has equal access to information on the web.

More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web.”

Having a website that is not accessible to everyone and anyone is not only unfair but from a business point of view it means that you are excluding potential customers. This means that having an accessible website is a concern not only for a web designer it should be something every business should consider when commissioning a corporate website.

There are several different components that can alter the accessibility of a website; content, and assistive technology are the main areas which this post will touch upon, however, accessibility has many different facets and issues which will not be discussed. For further information on this subject visit the W3C website.

Content and assisted technology
The content of a website is what the users interacts with; it is,

“the information in a Web page or Web application, including:
natural information such as text, images, and sounds
code or markup that defines structure, presentation, etc.”

It is a very important factor of web accessibility, after all information should be available to everyone; but if a website does not take into consideration who will be accessing the website and the difficulties they may encounter then there will be an unequal access to the information.

There is no defined list of disabilities that would have trouble accessing the internet, however, the most generalised are: visual impairments, audio impairments and physical impairments. This is of course a very small selection of disabilities, for a more comprehensive list visit the W3C website.

Visual Impairments
Blindness, partial sight and colour blindness are all visual impairments that may impede access to a website. To access the internet users suffering from a visual impairment such as blindness may rely upon assistive technology such as a screen reader, a screen reader reads out either selected elements of what is being displayed on the monitor (helpful for users with reading or learning difficulties), or it can read out everything that is happening on the computer (used by blind and vision impaired users). The screen reader will use the alt tag of an image to describe what it is so ensure all images and graphics have accurate Alt tags; don’t go overboard with the description give a clear and concise sentence about what the image is. Although the alt tag does say what an image is, try to avoid using images and graphics instead of text. As a screen reader is reading out the text on the website it is important to ensure that sentence structure and spelling in spot on, this is basic common sense.

Users with low vision may have difficulty reading or viewing a website and may use a screen reader or alternatively a screen enhancement system to enlarge the text and images on the website. Websites that offer alternative style sheets enable users to customise the website enlarging the text and adjusting the background colour as required.

Able Magazine displayed in the large text option

Colour blindness is a lack of sensitivity to certain colours. Common forms of colour blindness include difficulty distinguishing between red and green, or between yellow and blue. Sometimes colour blindness results in the inability to perceive any colour. This can be problematic if for example text does not adequately contrast with the background, to alleviate this problem a website can offer a high contrast style sheet.

BBC's Ouch website displayed in high contrast

Hearing Difficulties
This may not be the first disability people would associate with accessibility issues; however, individuals who suffer from deafness may not be able to read written language fluently. The primary way to overcome this is to use clear and simple language, which many critics consider to be the best way to write for the web, Jakob Nielsen is one of the leading scholars on the matter.

Audio files pose an obstacle to those with hearing difficulties and will rely upon captions to access the information on the audio file. For this to be successful webmasters placing an audio file on their website must ensure that there is a full transcript of the audio file available.

Physical Difficulties

Motor disabilities, joint problems or missing limbs can affect the hands and arms, as well as other parts of the body. Specialised controllers, keyboards, pointing devices or mouth pointers are available to those with difficulty using standard input devices.

To aid those who do use a standard mouse give them the functionality to increase the font size and make onsite links big making it easier for those with precision difficulties to click the link.
In conclusion web accessibility is not only an important factor for those suffering from a disability; it is an issue that will no doubt affect most people at one point in their life. It is the responsibility of a web master to ensure that their website is accessible in as many different ways as possible; not only to ensure equal access to information but to ensure that you are getting the maximum amount of traffic to your website. For those online retailers who have not provided alternative style sheets or additional functionality for users with disabilities you are essentially turning customers away.

References

BBC Ouch

WAI

Able Magazine

Web Accessibility Checker

Jakob Nielsen