People form opinions in the blink of an eye… but just how fast is that blink when it comes to a visitor’s first impression of a website?
How quickly do you think people judge a website?
(If you don’t see your four options just above this line, refresh the page. You may have an overactive security plugin on your browser.)
It’s 0.05 seconds—just 50 milliseconds!
According to a recent study by Google Research [source], “a websites’ first impression is known to be a crucial moment for capturing the user’s interest. Within a fraction of time, people build a first visceral ‘gut feeling’ that helps them to decide whether they are going to stay at this place or continue surfing to other sites.”
Fun Fact: the average speed of “the blink of an eye” is 100-150 milliseconds, so people judge websites in less than HALF the blink of an eye. Now, that’s a snap judgment. (Or is it? A snap is only 7 milliseconds. Who knew?)Did you guess correctly?
A lot goes into developing a website that works.
When you hear a designer or developer tell you that your site needs an update, there may be a good reason for that. Did you know there’s a real, measurable way to make your site “score” better in that short time before the visitor hits the back button and disappears—Visual Complexity (VC) and Prototypicality (PT)?
More about those in another post.
Don’t get overwhelmed; We can help!
Feel free to leave knowing about this kind of stuff to the oddballs who love it (us). You can stick to geeking out about the stuff that floats your boat—like running your business, raising funds for your nonprofit, managing programs for your school, or doom-scrolling on Instagram at 2am.
Contact us for details about our web consulting, strategy, design, & development services. We’d love to work on your website with you!