Attention (web) designers: you have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!

Gitte Lindgaard, Psychologin

Lindgaard, G., Fernandes, G., Dudek, C. & Brown, J. (2005). Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression! Behaviour & Information Technology (in Press).

Three studies were conducted to ascertain how quickly people form an opinion about web page visual appeal and its relation to several design features. In the first study, 22 participants twice rated the visual appeal of web pages presented for 500msecs each. Thirty-one participants took part in the second study, which replicated the first, but participants also rated each web page on seven design dimensions. Visual appeal was found to be closely related to several design features.

Forty participants took part in study 3, which replicated studies 1 and 2, but employed a 50msec condition to allow comparisons between exposure times. Throughout, visual appeal ratings were highly correlated from one trial to the next as were the correlations between the 50msec and 500msec conditions.

Thus, visual appeal is assessed within 50msecs. These findings suggest that web designers have about 50msecs to make a good first impression.