Article: First impressions count for web

hmmmm those people don't go to the Joe Blogg's sites that take a minimum of 5 secs to load, even ebay and yahoo etc are getting real slow on loading.

I was surfing around yesterday and found a couple of well designed sites, they looked good, but the content was dead (it said what it said and that was it, couldn't update or move on from it) so have no reason to go back.

You give gamers a bunch of gaming sites, they will tell you which ones are good, give them sites on something they aren't into and they probably wouldn't like any of them.
Give a hacker a set of law sites vs script sites ...

Who ever pays for these studies need to get out into the real world more.
In our main newspaper today they are now saying a apple a day is actually bad for you, contains to much sugar ...

IMHO best webdesign is created by webstudios, but this doesn't mean there will be anything useful for you
I love well-designed pages but content is far more important for me

It's like a lot of the news sites around the web, I read the news, don't like the sites but go back everyday to read the news - content wins.

Yeah, that study's got to be way off. I'd be interested in hearing how exactly they gathered that data. I wouldn't have been too suprised at one or two seconds (I tell my clients they have just a few seconds to make their impression), but half a second or less seems a little extreme.

Yeah, you can't take the BBC seriously, they're British But I thought it was interesting none the less.

That study probably cost an arm and a leg too

Didn't they say it was a Canadian study? (Yes, Carlton University, in Ottawa).

Back when I started web design in the 90s there used to be a lot of talk about the 30 seconds or however much time you have to make a first impression. You don't hear about it so much anymore.

We can debate about the number of seconds or milliseconds but I think it is true that first impressions are important. I think this would also depend on what sort of sites they were showing people. You can usually make a decision pretty quickly at the extreme ends of the good/poor quality spectrum.

I don't think you can ever take these studies too seriously. To be intellectually valid they have to operate in a very controlled environment which is not the case in everyday life. I assume they were operating on a fast connection and weren't considering the time it took the page to load. Another factor could be the experience level of the participants - new users might be more or less likely to make snap decisions based on quality.

I am seeing this all over the place. It's become such a huge deal and people are really distorting what's in the actual study - which I happen to have in front of me.

Firstly, the study measures visual appeal only. That's it. There was no measure of anything related to the quality of information or the quality of the site - just wheather it was visually appealing or not. A second phase of the study also measured the appeal of colour schemes, layout, and creativity.

Secondly (as with most academic studies), the participants were undergrad students. Undergrad students who were probably there becasue they were paid (either in cash or course credit). There were 22 participants in the first study, and 31 in the second. Small sample.

Anything regarding the quality of the information or the site was simply a hypothesis - it was not measured by the study at all (from what I can tell - I'm mostly skimming through this).

Reminds me of those ink blot cards

Well I don't think the BBC were incorrect, or misreporting. It is a pretty shoddy study though - shouldn't trust those Canadian studies

It's bad that the sample was terrible too, however I think they have a small point in that you'll decide whether a site looks nice really quickly.

As Megan points out, the rest is hypothesis.

Oh crap: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4061093.stm

Jakob Nielsen's in there now - lol!

BBC Web Site wrote: You can hear more from Jakob Nielsen and web design on the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital

Oh wow, I'm going to find this and post a link. Just got to love the World Service.

Found it (sorry for triple posting), the program is vintage 2004 and can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/progs/04/go_digital/06dec.ram

There's some class Nielsen action in there!

Eeeeeeewwwww.

THe funny thing is that the academic types at work are actually taking this seriously! More seriously than we are, anyway.