Please don’t think that you can just wack any old website on the internet. There are rules and regulations that need to be complied with.

• If you are a Limited company you have to comply with the Companies Act. This requires you to disclose certain corporate information on your website.
• All sites should comply with the Equality Act 2010 – so the site should be accessible to all people, regardless of ability.
• All sites should have a Privacy Policy and a Terms of Use statement.

The first and last are fairly easy to contend with but the second is a lot trickier.

In essence, to comply, your site has to be accessible to people who have limited eyesight, who might be colour blind and the site should be capable of being read by screen readers. And that is for starters.

There are others but I think that illustrates the sort of thing you have to take account of.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sets standards for web designers and, in many respects, if a website achieves these standards then it will also be accessible. An added bonus of being standards’ compliant is that the website will be more search engine friendly than one that does not comply.

To achieve all the standards and a high level of accessibility is not an easy task and is one that a lot of amateur web designers fail to do. It should also be pointed out that free websites offered by hosting companies are unlikely to comply. Cheap web design software is also unlikely to create websites that meet the coding standards.

If you want to be safe and avoid potentially being dragged through the courts and heavily fined,and you want to be seen by the search engines go to a professional company.

It is also a good idea to make sure that your web designer has Professional Indemnity Insurance – just in case anything should go wrong. Bewebbed, as a professional company,  is fully insured.