The twentieth of a second rule – why great design matters

Imagine giving a business presentation where you have a twentieth of a second to convince your audience they want to listen to your proposal. Where after a few seconds, if they don’t like it, they’ll simply walk out… and even if they haven’t walked out, they’ll already have made a pretty concrete decision on whether they’re interested or not. Sounds awful? Welcome to the web.

The internet can offer a world of possibilities, but internet users are a very discerning crowd. And the statistics are downright frightening. A Canadian study back in 2006 found that it takes a site visitor about a twentieth of a second to decide on whether a website appeals to them; and that this first impression is unlikely to change. The study’s volunteers were shown a fraction-of-a-second glimpse of a website and asked to rate how much the site appealed to them. They were then allowed to visit the site properly, after which they rated it again – and the research shows that the two ratings closely tallied. The study concluded that if users believe a site looks good, it generates a ‘halo effect’, where this positive experience is carried over to the whole website experience.

So does it all hinge on design, then? Well, no – conventional wisdom has it that you have less than ten seconds to convince a visitor that your site has what they’re looking for, which means that your message has to be spot-on too. But as we all know, first impressions count: and that means that your website design is one of the most crucial aspects of your overall presentation.

(PS If you want to find out how much of a website you perceive in the first few seconds, why not take a look at fivesecondtest - a utility created to help designers assess the effectiveness of their website designs)

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