In today’s online market place there is much competition between web programming companies to create the best product. Each company will have their own concepts and ideas on how to improve and develop websites, these include altering the web design, changing the content, or in some cases completely re-doing web pages. The XHTML design and coding of the pages is vital to stay ahead of competitors as it this aspect that makes a website user friendly.

There are many conversion service providers available that will update the XHTML coding with different terms and conditions attached. Any reputable conversion company should offer the same fundamental features which when done professionally should result in a complete and first rate XHTML conversion. Any aspect of the conversion that has not been handled adequately will result in a website that is not up to today’s high standards.

A conversion is not a simple procedure and it doesn’t always come cheap. It is not a task that an inexperienced and unqualified web-designer can carry out. Prior to choosing a conversion provider for your website you need to be sure that they will give you a service that is value for money.

The following aspects are essential in any conversion process -

Specific Source Files Format- The initial source files from the original webpage need to be in a recognized and common format, e.g. PSD, GIF, JPG, PNG, and others.

CSS – Previously web-designers used tables for coding, today a modern conversion includes CSS layout to arrange all elements and texts.

Search Engine Optimized (SEO) – To make sure that the converted website retains high rankings in all search engines the conversion process needs to use structured and logical HTML coding.

Keeping the original design – As the original design is what the customer has initially requested it is important that any conversion keeps the same design unless requested not to.

Cross Browser Compatibility- Today we have many different browsers and new and updated ones are coming online all the time. The conversion should be suitable to work with any browser and version as different people use different ones.

Turnaround Time – If a conversion needs to be done, then it is best done in as short a time as possible. A professional company should be able to update the coding in as little as one or two days per page or even less time if a team of programmers is involved.

W3C Validation- The markup validation service by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) allows Internet users to check HTML documents for conformance to HTML or XHTML standards. It also provides a quick method for web page authors to check their posted pages for mark-up errors.

Hand coded XHTML Strict markup- Creating hand coded XHTML is a preferential system as it allows an all round knowledge of the website coding.