Many people have a difficult time understanding the importance of using CSS when building a website. There are also many articles out there, but most of them are targeted at people who have prior knowledge of website design. Here I will make things easier to understand to those that simply want to know why they are having someone use CSS or why they should be using CSS if they don’t.

Basic Advantages of using CSS:
• your pages will load faster
• your website will require a less expensive website hosting plan
• redesigns/changes will be easier to implement, take less time, and potentially cost less
• allows for a visual consistency throughout the site
• you will have better search engine results (SEO)
• it will be more accessible to those with disabilities
• it will be more accessible to mobile devices, various web browsers, and is print-friendly
• it will be more flexible to expansion, changes, javascript, etc.

These are all very important to creating and maintaining a successful website. It may seem like I am promising the world to those who use CSS without actually backing up these statements so I will go into more detail explaining why CSS gives you these benefits. I have provided images depicting what the basic file structure of a website both using and not using CSS. Each separate page you see is a separate file for the user to download.

Without CSS

With CSS

Essentially, CSS separates the code for the appearance of the page from the content of the page. Users will only have to download the code for the appearance once and their computer will remember it for every other page they visit rather than having it inside of every page. This means there is less code to download when viewing the website. If there’s less to download then there’s less waiting for the page to load. This also uses less bandwidth for the website host meaning that it can potentially save money on bandwidth costs.

Having the appearance code separate from the content will be greatly beneficial to the website designer. If there is an item on the website that has the same visual style they will be able to have that item use the same code and reuse it on each instance of that item. This leads to a consistent visual style. Another benefit is if the designer needs to change the appearance of anything on the site they will only need to change it in one place and every single instance of that element will be changed on every page on the website automatically. This will be much easier for the designer and will take much less time to do.

The ratio of appearance code to actual content on any given page makes a difference in search engines and accessibility. The less appearance code that the search engines have to wade through to get to the content on the page the better your search engine rankings. This also leads to better results in screen readers for the blind and to those with other disabilities. You can also designate a certain appearance for the different ways that a user is looking at the page. The website can automatically adjust to if it’s being viewed on a screen, tv, projector, mobile device, iphone, printer, and more. This means the user will always get the optimal experience while viewing the site no matter what they view it on.

This is quite a list of benefits for using CSS. There are additional benefits to using CSS, but I would hate to have this blog post turn into a book so I’ll keep it short. I want people to realize that these are the things that you may be missing out on if their website isn’t using CSS. It’s definitely worth finding out if your website is using it or not as these things are important to building a website if you want it to be successful and an enjoyable experience for it’s users.

Kurt Zenisek
Internet Marketing Group Website Design Cedar Rapids, Iowa