The first few seconds a reader has when first viewing your site can be the deciding factor of whether they hang around to read even the first few lines, a study has shown. In a report by the journal Behaviour and Information Technology it has shown that readers’ first impressions of a site closely tallied with their given impression even after a longer period of time on the site. The BBC news article goes on to show that decisions by the brain in the first 20 milliseconds can have much longer lasting effects on their opinion of the website, first impressions have a lasting impact.
“If people believe a website looks good, then this positive quality will spread to other areas, such as the website’s content.”
While clearly to keep the reader or customer interested, the website’s content must equal the quality of the design, this does illustrate the importance of attractive, stylish websites.
