Blink and you’ll miss ‘em. The Importance of Good Design
November 7th, 2006
A study carried out in Canada found that Internet users make up their mind about the design quality of a website in just a 20th of a second, a much more subliminal decision than actively looking over the whole page and assessing individual elements.
These quickly formed initial impressions of a design will last because of what’s known as “the halo effect”, which is explained on Wikipedia as:
a person who is good at “X” is often deemed to be good at “Y” even if the two items are not related. Celebrities are used to endorse products that they have no expertise in evaluating.
If people believe a website looks good, then this positive feeling will be applied to other elements, such as your content, key messages and perceived expertise. They will continue to use a website that made a good first impression.
Many internet users will immediately close a website if the design is bad, as credibility is a very important factor in making a decision to buy from, or do business with a company.
Obviously the opposite is also true, the presence of code errors, spelling mistakes, badly prepared images, low quality logo etc will all detract from your credibility, and your Internet audience will believe your actual business and service level will be in a similar state.
If you are concerned about the state of your website and what your visitors may think, then let us take a look at it. We’re currently offering a free PDF report on many aspects of your website. Just get in touch
Entry Filed under: Web Design Best Practices
Leave a Comment
Please note: Comments are moderated so won't appear immediately. SPAM will not be accepted.
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed