Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!

TLDR

The study examined how quickly users form opinions about web page visual appeal. The authors conducted three experiments, each presenting web pages for brief exposures (500 ms, and in the third study also 50 ms) and collecting visual‑appeal ratings, with the second study also evaluating seven design dimensions. Visual‑appeal ratings were highly correlated across exposure durations and design dimensions, indicating that users can reliably judge a page’s appeal within 50 ms.

Abstract

Three studies were conducted to ascertain how quickly people form an opinion about web page visual appeal. In the first study, participants twice rated the visual appeal of web homepages presented for 500 ms each. The second study replicated the first, but participants also rated each web page on seven specific design dimensions. Visual appeal was found to be closely related to most of these. Study 3 again replicated the 500 ms condition as well as adding a 50 ms condition using the same stimuli to determine whether the first impression may be interpreted as a 'mere exposure effect' (Zajonc 1980). 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.