Separate your content from its presentation. It is a best practice to keep the code on your website that controls of the appearance of your site separate from the actual content. It’s good for accessibility and it’s good for flexibility, in case you want to go back and change stuff on your site later. I recently read an article by Aaron Gustafson on A List Apart, Understanding Progressive Enhancement, that reinforced this concept from a bit of a different angle.

“Progressive enhancement” dates back to 2003. This article starts with contrasting progressive enhancement with graceful degradation. Whereas graceful degradation focuses on giving the latest browsers the best experience while not completely breaking the experience for older browsers, progressive enhancement takes the opposite perspective: starting with a good experience and making it better depending on what technology you’re using. This is the angle the interesting angle. It’s not just about making sure that a website works for everyone. A highly interactive site can engage users and may increase conversion rates, and progressive enhancement takes the content as the foundation on which you can build a great website.

The heart of progressive enhancement is the content – writing content that is properly marked up so it is versatile and can be displayed in all sorts of different technologies. Gustafson uses the analogy of a peanut M&M to discuss this – the content is the peanut, the chocolate is presentation (CSS), and the hard candy shell is the flashy, snappy interactive features that use the best that browsers have to offer. Although almond M&M’s are obviously superior to the peanut variety, this is a good analogy.

This approach makes sense. Foremost, if people can’t access your content, why bother having a website? Solid and versatile content is good for people who have disabilities. There’s always going to be plenty of users who do not have the very latest browser – plus, you never know who’s going to come out with a brand new browser next. Browsers may not even be the main way customers interact with your content, one day.

This progressive enhancement concept plays well with SEO. You’ve got to ensure that search engines can figure out what your site is all about, so making your content adaptable is going to help. From a user experience perspective, also, this stuff matters. You don’t want to go around cutting off potential customers from reading your site just because they’re on a mobile device or are paranoid about having Javascript turned on.