Web Site Design -  How important is it?

Web site design is extremely important.  To put it simply....   For the viewing public the design should have a professional, consistent and clean look.  It should not be busy or crowded.  The fonts used must be easy to read or your viewer will not stay for long.  Each web page should download quickly and it should be interesting!  You must remember that what the viewer sees is his sole impression of your business! 

The web site design is critical to the search engine robots that will be crawling through your web site.  Programming languages must not hinder the robots ability to crawl the site.  The page design must incorporate techniques that will help them to see that your site is very important to their engine or directory,  and therefore should be placed highly when specific keywords are searched for.  If optimization techniques are neglected, your site will never be found by your prospective customers.