First impressions: your site is judged in the blink of an eye

January 2006

Users make snap decisions in under 50 milliseconds

Do you like the look of this site? I hope so, but whatever you thought, odds are you decided within the first twentieth of a second.

Canadian research shows that first impressions really last - even the first 50 milliseconds. Carleton University of Ottawa found that the brain makes flash judgements almost as fast as the eye can see the information. Gitte Lendgaard, behind the research, says she was surprised how quickly opinions were formed.

Volunteers were flashed websites that they had previously rated, and asked to rate them again. Their split-second judgements agreed very closely with judgements made after a normal length of time.

What does this mean for you? The internet is a crowded marketplace. Chances are you go to a lot of effort attracting people to your site. Don't let it be wasted on a site that turns people away! "Unless the first impression is favourable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors," warns Lindgaard.

For most commercial websites, 60% of traffic comes from search engines like Google and Yahoo. So a user's first impression becomes even more crucial. If you don't grab a user's attention in those first few milliseconds, they'll be back to the list on Google and you'll never see them again.

A strong first impression does more than just keep users with you - an attractive design produces a "halo effect", so people are more likely to overlook minor faults and may even rate the content higher. Everyone enjoys being right, so if they've already told themselves your website is good, they must prove to themselves that they made a good decision by finding more good things about it.

So what can you do?

What are the key ingredients of an attractive site? It's good to have images, but not too much - perhaps one single eye-catching image.

Look at one of the most famous, best-used websites of all. Google. Hardly trying to fit as much on the page as they can, are they? Your website should be for getting information across in the simplest, fastest way possible. There are established design conventions (logo in the top left corner, search on the right, housekeeping at the bottom etc.) that many sites use, so users expect to see them. By all means break and experiment with design rules for colour, font etc. But these rules are there for a reason - they make the site easier to use. And that's what its all about.

Leanne Smith is a founder of Sleek Services, a popular web solutions service that builds intelligent websites for intelligent people. For more articles or to see what an intelligent, high-traffic website can do for you visit www.SleekServices.net.