First Impressions Matter: The Importance of Great Visual Design

It is often said in life that first impressions are everything. Whether we judge a person based on their appearance or by what they drive, or we judge a business based on their store or office location; when it comes to your website’s appearance – it goes without saying that a first impression really is everything.

When website users look at a badly designed website, they don’t just judge the website, they judge the company. There is ample evidence that design heavily influences first impressions, and that first impressions influence a consumer’s trust and respect for a company.

Bad design is no longer something business owners can joke about and place at the bottom of their priority list. It’s costing companies money in the form of lost clients, not to mention credibility and reputation.

Never forget that the very first thing your visitors see is your page loading. Images gradually appear, buttons randomly pop-up, links become clickable and in the meantime your visitors are left waiting. The longer it takes for your page to load, the worse the impression you’re making.

Here’s why first impressions on your website are killing your business and costing you clients.

People make snap judgements. It takes only 1/10th of a second to form a first impression about a person, and websites are no different. It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave.

This number comes from specific studies. In the first study, participants twice rated the visual appeal of web homepages presented for 500 ms each. In a follow-up study they reduced the exposure time to 50 ms. Throughout, visual appeal ratings were highly correlated from one phase to the next as were the correlations between the 50 ms and 500 ms conditions. Thus, visual appeal can be assessed within 50 ms, suggesting that web designers have about 50 ms to make a good first impression.

This first impression depends on many factors: structure, colors, spacing, symmetry, amount of text, fonts, and more. All the website screenshots below are for illustrative purposes only.

• Make your web design simple and familiar (follow conventions – e.g. people have a fixed idea what an e-commerce site should be like). If you go for innovative, unconventional layouts – people are less likely to like them.
• Great design gets people to trust you and to stick around. Poor design creates mistrust and makes people leave.
• Invest in design – it’s what matters the most for pulling users in.
• If their first impression is negative, it might cause the user to have prejudice against you for years.