Gone are the days of companies throwing a website together in Microsoft Publisher (using horrible clipart), but people still often do not understand the importance of a well thought out page layout.  A well planned and coded page offers numerous advantages over a poorly done one:

• Reusability – Theoritically, with some changes to the CSS file and graphics, the whole look and feel can be changed dramatically.  This allows for easy re-skinning, or the possibity of porting the site to another platform (ie mobile)

• SEO – The more text that is used, the more likely it is that search engines will pick up the content.  If text is rasterized in image files, only human eyes will be able to read it.

• 508 / Accessibility – Screen readers examine pages in a certain way.  If the page is poorly constructed, then the reader will not read the page in a logical fashion.  For instance, the footer could be read before the content.

• Compatibility – All pages will probably always be needed to be tested in the more popular web browsers, but the absence of hacks and non-standard conventions will result in less issues.

• Bandwidth conservation – Properly coded pages should be light weight.  When minified CSS and JS files are used as well, load speed should be very fast for the user, almost regardless of the connection.