According to the research team, lead by Dr. Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa, the brain makes decisions based on visual appeal faster than previously theorized.
In other words, first impressions — in the first 50 milliseconds — really do count.
“Visual appeal can be assessed within 50 milliseconds, suggesting that web designers have about 50 milliseconds to make a good impression,” wrote the team in the latest edition of the journal Behavior & Information Technology.
Lindgaard and his team conducted the study by showing test subjects a 50-millisecond snapshot of a website. After the image had flashed across the screen, researchers asked the participants to rate the aesthetic appeal of the site.
After the sites had been reviewed at 50-millisecond intervals, researchers went back and let the test subjects thoroughly examine each website and review it again.
Amazingly, reviews from both the 50-millisecond viewing and the extended viewing were almost identical in every instance.
“My colleagues believed it would be impossible to really see anything in less than 500 milliseconds [one-half a second],” Lindgaard said.
The findings, she said, send a message to the online business world about the importance of designing visually appealing websites.
“Unless the first impression is favorable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors,” Lindgaard said.
Lindgaard and her research team theorize that first impressions tie-in to something called the “halo effect.” In the context of website viewing, the halo effect refers to the human tendency to base opinions solely on visual appeal. In other words, if a person thinks a website has visual appeal, that positive feeling will spread to opinions of the site’s content, even if the content by itself does not stand out from the competition.
