Opera and the business benefits of Web Standards
By Bruce Lawson
About Opera
It's a web browser.
What's the difference?
Opera’s vision is to provide the best Internet experience on any device
Mobile Web - why the operators love it
The big picture
Wealthy Western Web
Opera Mini
- Free for consumers with older (non-smart) phones. 350% growth in last year
- Opera just announced deals with Yahoo! to distribute Opera Mini as part of a new Yahoo! mobile application and with Vodafone to pre-install Opera Mini on the carrier's feature phones in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
- "The next billion people coming online will come from a mobile phone"
Also Opera Turbo for desktop computers
How does Opera make money?
Free to the consumer.
- Google search bar in desktop browser
- Mobile Operators pay us to put Opera Mini on phones
- Embedded devices
What is a Standard?

When Standards go wrong
Open vs Closed Standards
Open Standards are made by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in public, through debate, discussion leading to concensus.
Closed Standards are made by a single company, in secret, according to the business needs of that company.
The dangers of a monoculture
South Korea is a nation that at the forefront of technology, an early adopter of ecommerce, leading the world in 3G mobile adoption, in wireless broadband, in wired broadband adoption, as well as in citizen-driven media.
But the Web is in hands of a single corporation.
http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s
Advantages of Open Standards
The Web works everywhere - The Web is the platform
- Good standards help developers: validate; separate content and presentation - means specialisation and maintainability.
- Good standards help site owners: more maintainability; smaller pages; better SEO
- Good standards help site end-users: light-weight; findable; interoperable; more likely accessible
Theresa is blind
But she can use the Web if it's made with standards (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)
Case study - Legal and General
British based financial services company that provides life, health and other insurance, as well as pensions and investments. Its shares trade on the London Stock Exchange as part of the FTSE 100 Index. Major markets include U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. www.landg.com
- Content not web-friendly: PDFs
- JavaScript dependency in forms and navigation
- Too much industry jargon
- Developer’s knowledge of accessibility inadequate
www.brucelawson.co.uk/pas78
Legal and General's redesign
- A 30% increase in natural search-engine traffic; “significant improvement” in Google rankings “for all target keywords”
- 75% reduction in time for page to load
- Browser-compatibility (no complaints since), accessible to mobile devices
- Time to manage content “reduced from five days to 0.5 days per job”
- Savings of £200K (R14 million) annually on site maintenance
- 90% increase in life insurance sales online
- 100% return on investment in less than 12 months.
Open Web Standards…
- oppose dominance by one corporation and so promote choice
- promote inclusion
- lower development cost: write once, work everywhere (you can't test every device!)
- work smarter, not cheaper
Thank you
brucel@opera.com
education@opera.com
There are no foolish questions - only fools who do not question