We all know that with the ever shortening attention span of people these days that we only have a few seconds
to catch the attention of a potential customer. Well guess what? Now we have a study that tells us that we actually
have less than a few seconds. Designers have an average of 1/20th of a second to keep a viewer. How shallow no? A study
conducted by Carleton University in Canada, published in Behaviour and Information Technology, and reported on
by Nature.com hypothesized that websites had
500 milliseconds to make an impression. In reality we only have 50 milliseconds before the viewer passes judgement. And
so there you have it, though content is still king, the trick for us is to make a lasting impression during the first 50
milliseconds of viewing. Doesn't sound that tough. The study aligned itself with the KISS philosophy, less is more. And
however great your content is, the delivery makes the initial impression and sometimes it's the only chance you'll get.Webdesigners have an average of 50 milliseconds to make an impression
We all know that with the ever shortening attention span of people these days that we only have a few seconds
to catch the attention of a potential customer. Well guess what? Now we have a study that tells us that we actually
have less than a few seconds. Designers have an average of 1/20th of a second to keep a viewer. How shallow no? A study
conducted by Carleton University in Canada, published in Behaviour and Information Technology, and reported on
by Nature.com hypothesized that websites had
500 milliseconds to make an impression. In reality we only have 50 milliseconds before the viewer passes judgement. And
so there you have it, though content is still king, the trick for us is to make a lasting impression during the first 50
milliseconds of viewing. Doesn't sound that tough. The study aligned itself with the KISS philosophy, less is more. And
however great your content is, the delivery makes the initial impression and sometimes it's the only chance you'll get.Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. I know that we have little time to make a impression but 50 ms is plain too low. Can the the eye -> brain -> judgement occur in such a short period of time ? Either way this make good website design very important.
Posted at 4:38AM on Jan 27th 2006 by Kontaktanzeige
1. I agree with Kontaktanzeige. 50 ms seems very low. I agree that a users' judgment time is short, but I really don't think that 50ms is accurate - Google doesn't even render its pages that quick. Design is vastly important, but I would think that your users give you more than 50ms to check out the site. I can see maybe an initial impression being made that quick, but I know I personally give sites a little more time than that to see if maybe they just have a bad design - and I'm a pretty quick surfer imho.
Posted at 12:36AM on Feb 8th 2006 by Anthony Graddy