While you can’t really put a dollar value on it, your company Web site is a very important asset. At the very least, the Web site provides a means to disseminate information about your business to people all over the world. You might also use the Web site to sell goods and services, or to encourage a sense of community through forums and portals for partners, customers and employees. As we delve deeper into the era of Web 2.0, corporate Web sites are used to provide a multitude of services.

But what would you do if customers began to complain that your Web site is not accessible to people with disabilities who use assistive technology? What if the Web site is peppered with broken links that leave visitors frustrated because they can’t get to the information they want? And what if your Web site failed to protect visitors’ privacy rights and accidently revealed information that shouldn’t be made public? How would you know if pages on your Web site have been hijacked by hackers?

No company wants to be the next Target Corporation, which is being sued for having an inaccessible Web site, or the next Facebook, which inadvertently revealed private data on 80 million members.

There’s a new discipline called Web governance that involves crawling through the multitude of pages of a Web site, looking for signs of trouble. Web governance defines the rules for content editors, business owners, developers, administrators and designers to operate maintain and evolve Web sites and/or intranets from a content, design, quality, and technology perspective. Web governance also focuses on how decisions and policies get made and implemented with respect to content, data and applications published on an organization’s Web site(s).

There’s more than just quality content at stake here. There are numerous regulations that have civil or legal ramifications if violated. For example, many government agencies in the United States are mandated by law to ensure that their Web sites are accessible to people with disabilities. In the United Kingdom and other countries, privacy laws govern how personal information can be collected via Web sites and used for various purposes. Violating these and other regulations can have costly consequences in terms of fines and restitution to victims. Web governance helps to ensure standardization, control and compliance (Compare Network Auditing and Compliance products) with privacy and accessibility regulations.

Linda Musthaler is a principal analyst with Essential Solutions Corporation.