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

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 500ms 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 500ms condition as well as adding a 50ms 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 50ms and 500ms conditions. Thus, visual appeal can be assessed within 50ms, suggesting that web designers have about 50 ms to make a good first impression.