As I was surfing the web to try and find a gift for Father’s Day, I realized how very important the design of a website can be.  There were several websites that I passed up because they either looked too childish, confusing, disorganized, or even spurious.  Being so involved in the internet and having grown up in the internet generation, I guess I took for granted that everyone, especially entrepreneurs, realized the impact that a website makes on a potential customer.  You only get a few seconds to make a good first impression and if you do not make me feel comfortable surfing your site and giving you my credit card information, I will move on to the next site. 

     Moreover, I was observing a colleague while he surfed several University websites and saw the same phenomenon.  Some sites are just poorly laid out and it greatly affects how potential students view the entire school.  When I was looking at Universities at which to apply, their website did make an impact on me.  Granted, their website was not as important to me as the credentials of the school but it did make a difference in how I viewed the school. 

    In light of this, I cannot help but wonder how poor websites come into being.  Surely, someone must be advising both the corporate business owners and the Universities that websites matter in this highly technical world.  A person can barely function anymore without the internet and it is the most common way to distribute information to the masses.  It is just so hard to believe that such poorly conceived websites can still exist when we depend so heavily upon the internet.