I should also add that browse time does not necessarily translate into profit. It depends on the content and business model. Sometimes, you don’t want people to hang around and eat up your bandwidth. You want them to get in, get what they came for, and buy the product or whatever. Other business models encourage different behaviors.

In the final analysis, it means you have to keep this in mind as a possible factor: Most people will judge the professionalism of your site within the first 1/20th of a second based on its visual appeal. However, you have to measure the actual factors that are important to your business model and optimize them.

-TimK

There was another study done awhile ago, I -think- by Stanford, that analyzed how people judge the credibility and quality of a website and thus the company that puts it out there.

The resounding results were: Quality of Graphic Design is the clear chief deciding factor by a landslide.

Content didn’t even come close.

I don’t think Stanford cooked it down quite as much to just a time study, but the results were clearly the same.

I use the Stanford study as ammo to consulting clients all the time.

-Pick on Carleton’s methodology all you want, but the results are accurate. :P

Sue Burgess is quoted as saying, “There’s no doubt that people do respond very quickly to websites and decide very quickly whether to stay on them,” but the article cites not a single shred of evidence for that conclusion. (I have not found the study report and do not even know whether it is available on-line.) No doubt visual appeal does play into browsing patterns, but so does content. And I’m not going to spend hours and dollars optimizing for visual appeal, at the expense of content, based on this article.

-TimK

Well, if the “Canadians” said it .. it must be true :P

“…flashed up websites for 50 milliseconds…” is the first clue….

A – The people knew they were participating in an experiment.
B – They were given a specific time frame to view a page controlled by other people instead of themselves.
C – Random websites not chosen by the viewer. This is where the biggest problem lies. Most people go to a website because they are looking for something specific, especially if they *know* that the site contains a file, article or something else they already had a clue existed via links on other sites and search engines. If they are looking for something in particular, they will then look for the item on the page, no matter what the design. This is evident in people looking for software, scripts, etc.
D – There is a huge difference between someone having random pages flashed in front of them and visiting a site because they are looking for something.

Conclusion: It may take 50 milliseconds to form a perception of the page, but there are too many factors involved to say that people ‘make up their minds’ that quickly.

A primal response does not equate to a full perspective of the site’s content.

(It kind of makes the whole study pointless in the first place, as the Web moves in that direction. Heck, I got to this entry and this comment form by reading Problogger in an aggregator.)

And I totally agree about the time assessment.

Its demonstrably not true. Slashdot and Ain’t It Cool News are too but ugly websites that have a huge loyal repeat audience.

I even have personal experience of this. Several of my readers have told me that they like one of my blogs but find the design incredibly boring. Yet they keep reading.

People may judge whether they like the design in 1/20th of a second, but that doesn’t mean they leave instantly.

We aren’t saying that people “should” judge a site by its design, we’re only saying that people “do” judge a site by its design.

Again, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to beautiful but worthless Flash sites. It’s a freaking pandemic on the Web. Forget bird flu.

Once again, the Problogger points me to a story entitled ‘Net Users Take 1/20th of a Second to Judge your Blog’s Design’, which links to a study that determines, gasp, that design matters online. I cannot believe we’re still discussing this topic….