ActiveStandards™

We can help you define standards across all aspects of your company's online policies, and help ensure that you comply with the recommendations of PAS 124.

The key policies that organisations typically need to have in place in order to maximise the effectiveness of their web estate, include:

Goals

Goals formally establish what your company aims to achieve through standards. They enable your standards to be tested and evaluated against objective criteria and are essential for gaining stakeholder buy-in and consensus at the start of the project.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) policy

SEO is the practice of tailoring the content, code and structure of your website to boost its organic rankings in search engines, and enhance the 'discoverability' of its content. It is important to establish SEO standards to ensure that the website owners are following best practice procedures when building their web pages.

Domain name policy

As a corporate web presence typically encompasses a growing number of websites, a clear policy is needed to ensure a systematic approach to domain names.  This delivers many benefits, including:

• Enhanced memorability for users typing domains directly into the browser address bar
• Improved navigational consistency
• Improved search engine ranking (as part of an SEO strategy)
• Facilitates the capture and analysis of website metrics
• Time savings in selecting new domain names

Editorial guidelines

The web is a channel with unique dynamics, and communicating effectively on the web requires specific skills and techniques.  Editorial guidelines need to cover the principles of effective writing, formatting and content structuring, along with any editorial standards specific to your company or industry.

Accessibility guidelines

Ensuring that a website is accessible to disabled users is a legal requirement in many countries. Your accessibility standards should provide an overview of the principles of accessibility, specify your company's target accessibility level and criteria, and provide specific guidance on how these levels can be reached.

Usability standatds

Usability standards are concerned with ensuring that users can accomplish their goals on a website quickly and efficiently. A usability policy document provides a concise overview of usability principles to support editors. It also provides guidance on creating usable pages within the company's framework.

Legal standards

Although many legal standards are specific to a website's jurisdiction, there are specific standards that apply globally. These include:

• Use of copyright statements
• Privacy issues
• Data protection issues
• Presence of a legal disclaimer
• Use of cookies

A legal standards policy defines and clarifies all these areas.

Online brand standards

An online brand standards document should cover issues such as:

• The presentation of the company's brand online
• Correct use of the company's templates and components
• Applying website standards within the context of the company's templates
• Best practice presentation of images, downloads and rich media etc.

For optimum ease of use, it is essential that the brand standards document incorporates examples and illustrations, so that the information is actionable for web editors.

Website creation policy

Uncontrolled website creation within an organisation leads to wasted resource. It is vital for an organisation to provide clear guidance on this subject, including conditions under which a new website may be created, and where content should be published within an existing website.

Co-branding standards  

A co-branding policy document provides guidance for the production of co-branded websites, on issues such as:

• Where co-branding is appropriate
• Levels of co-branding, if relevant
• Use of the company logo
• Linking to appropriate company assets