The idea that good design can improve how people perceive your business has long been a part of a designer’s sales tools.

They try to convince you that by improving your image, maybe creating a new logo or changing the way you communicate with your customers you can somehow improve sales and improve your bottom line. But are they right?

Over the years many companies have been skeptical about these claims because of a lack of concrete evidence. Designers struggle to back up their claims with written evidence and so this argument for good design often falls down at the first hurdle.

However, last year The Design Council released the results of a groundbreaking study on the link between the use of design and financial performance. The study published in March 2004 finally recognized the direct relationship between effective use of design and financial performance.

In print, visual impact, beauty, or making sure that type just plain fits is immensely important. In print, a word is a word, whether it's in the body copy or dropped out of a four color image. But the marketing paradigm for using images in print is not the same on the web. In print, visual impact grabs attention. You have to have attention before you can say anything. In this regard, in print, the importance of visuals can trump words. But on the web, the attention-grabbing work of the image is not necessary at all. This is because people don't walk past websites or have websites presented to them in between television shows. Instead, people go to websites by choice. They go to a website on purpose by clicking on a link or by typing in a URL. Site design has no influence whatsoever in whether someone chooses to click on a link. Once they do click, the way the site looks again becomes important—but not supremely important.

Everybody's heard about Web standards, yet very few really go the extra mille to comply with them. Currently, five standards have been officially implemented, and two more are in the works. Most of them come from the W3 Consortium. One standard, however, originated at another organization, called ECMA.

The W3C develops open specifications to enhance the interoperability of Web-related products, in an effort to ultimately standardize the WWW. Special working groups obtain a general consensus from companies and organizations that are active in the Web's development. These documents, called Working Drafts and Proposed Recommendations, are submitted to the W3C board of executive members and directors for formal approval as "official" W3C Recommendations. These Recommendations are what the Web standards are all about. They are the foundations upon which the future of Web building resides. They include HTML, XML, CSS and DOM.