An easy way to start evaluating web design companies

Just checking latest site, (passed with zero errors for a change!) and cmd-v'd www.w3.org into their own checker (W3C) and it has 19 errors! haha

Pot and Kettle springs to mind!

In light of why the thread was started I dont think it is a way to evaluate a web design company - there are more important things to look for, and i'd say look at W3C validation as a tie-breaker after narrowing down a couple of contenders if there isn't much else to separate them.

We validate almost all sites these days insofar as we can, but the customer hasn't got a clue what it is so no point trying to impress them with it if they don't know how it benefits them. They are more concerned with other matters like cost, achieving the look and feel they want, will it work (if its dynamic) and will it actually rank somewhere for decent keywords once launched (the rest is up to them after that of course) and usability if it's got a csm, cart, etc. Oh and aftercare is another big concern. Its not always built in to the quote, but if a glitch appears after 3 weeks, they will expect you to fix it for free whether you included aftercare or not.

I completely agree with you Indizine that there are many important aspects to consider when choosing a web design company. As I said in my initial post, design skills, a sound understanding of the customer's area of industry, price, and standards of customer service (such as free post live bug fixes) all need to be taken into account. In fact it would be worse than short-sighted to evaluate a web design company solely by how much it conforms to the WC3. Equally, if every web design company adheres rigidly to the rules of the current validator, they will miss out on the newest technological developments (for example, the new CSS3 standards, as we have been discussing in the recent posts).

My original point was never that the validator should be used as a means to evaluate whether a web design company is good or not-so-good. It was specifically that the validator can be used to evaluate whether a web design company "adheres to W3C Recommendations", and that getting a message saying a document was successfully checked means that a company "has the ability to build web pages that validate to W3C Recommendations and other standards".

Is this the most important aspect from a customer's perspective? Probably not. But is it important from a designers perspective? Undoubtedly. The validator is simply an embodiment of accepted rules and standards for web design at a specific point in time. If a designer understands these rules and standards and decides to break them for a specific purpose (for example, third party widgets, css3 browser hacks) then that's one thing. And as Kip FX has said, even the validator site itself throws some errors! Not to mention many other prominent sites, Amazon, Last Minute, Tesco to name but a few. But if a designer is completely ignorant of these standards or pays no attention to them at all, his websites may not display properly on other browsers or configurations. And that is important from a customer's perspective.

When it comes down to it, the validator is one of a series of steps available to take when evaluating web designers. It may not be the most important one, and the validator may not even return a perfect result (I know it doesn't on our site, thanks to our use of new CSS3 standards and our facebook "like" button, to name a few!) But if a potential customer runs a check that returns literally hundreds of errors, he may want to wonder why. Ultimately, if these standards matter to web designers, then directly or indirectly, they matter to customers too. But only when considered as part of an overall package that includes design, understanding, price, and all the rest...

Have you seen how many Monster has?

[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.monster.co.uk/ - W3C Markup Validator

Hundreds of errors isn't the be all and end all if it was anything that really affected the team you hired or the rankings you achieved, maybe so. Clearly here it doesn't so that's proof that other factors will always far outweigh W3C.

It's mostly just a nicety to add on that you can chuck into the mix as a standard you achieve. But it doesn't win orders nor keep customers. And it doesn't stop you ranking high.

I would disagree, validation doesnt really make any difference and can fail due to lots of things (jquery, css etc) not just poor coding.

Google have confirmed several times that validation plays no part in ranking and have no plans to introduce it. Poorly coded sites can cause performance issues which will effect SEO but poorly coded and not validated are not the same sometimes.