Slashdot Mirror
Web Users Judge Sites Instantly
Ant writes "This Nature.com news article reports that potential readers can make snap decisions in just 50 milliseconds: 'Like the look of our website? Whatever the answer, the chances are you made your mind up within the first twentieth of a second. A study by researchers in Canada has shown that the snap decisions Internet users make about the quality of a web page have a lasting impact on their opinions...'"
This article is obviously rubbish
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
Too much red & pink on that website.
But is it as fast as getting slashdotted?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Having all this information at our fingertips is awe-inspiring, yet completely useless if we can't sort through it properly. That's why companies like Google and datamining companies make so much money.
As society and people evolve to adapt to the new technology, we build our "defenses" against bad information. We have so much to go through that unless we are able to filter out bad information that quickly, we'll never get anywhere. Not to mention the fact that in this day and age of spyware/adware, plagiarism, virii and big brother everybody needs to learn what information to avoid.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This is why I kept away from /. for so many years
I can't remember what I thought of slashdot... so long ago.
It hasn't stopped us from visiting Slashdot. Over and over and over again...
I thought playboy.com was drivel when I was a young lad...but over the course of about 5 years, that all changed.
http://licktheblade.com/
it took me just 50 milliseconds to disagree with that article!
Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, devnull@candidhosting.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
I think these are the two big determiners- if the first thing I see are 20 banner ads, I'm looking elsewhere. If I can't easily see how to get to the data I want, I'm looking elsewhere. These are easy to tell very quickly (ads on 1 glance, navigation by looking for a left column or top navigation bar). Most sites that have people leave that quickly fail one of these 2 tests, I think.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You'll get a list of sites, click the top one, and then either say 'I've engaged' and give it a few more seconds... Sounds like he's confusing searching on google with premature ejaculation.
So it's like racism for websites.
Of course, I think this mental heuristic is pretty useful more often than not.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
When I first looked at the article, it said " Web Users Judge Sites Instantly."
:)
Now it says "Web Users Judge Sites In The Blink of an Eye."
What is this, some kind of trick?
Quoth TFA "Even though the images flashed up for just 50 milliseconds, roughly the duration of a single frame of standard television footage, their verdicts tallied well with judgements made after a longer period of scrutiny."
.25 seconds. This study erronseously assumes that the judgement is made during the time the image is displayed - of course, the image retention time on the eye end the lasting photographic imprint on the memory means that the judgement can happen well after the image is gone.
The human reaction time is about
How a friend linked me over MSN to a new flash animation on JibJab, myself having seen one before without incident didn't mind, however as soon as I loaded up their site they used flash to get around my pop up blocker and pop up an ad for Western Union.
From now on I will neither go to Jib Jab or even think of using Western Union.
I do not *need* to see their content no matter how good it apparently is.
hmmm....interesting p0rn site...but it does nothing more than distract web users....
of course i believe the internet only innovates because of the adlt industry. Think about all the new technologies. They were all developed for the online smut economy. Online payment, straming video, webcams...advertising...etc. Net tech is created by the porn industry.
I guess now would be the most appropriate time for people to start posting goatse.cx links. I can tell you what, I think my reaction time was quicker than 50ms the first time I accidentally clicked on that link at work. *shudder*
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
Probably a way to take better advice from this is to design your pages so they load *FAST* without too many animations, images, and effects. For instance, the dreaded Flash animation page which presents you with a blank box and a progress meter in the middle ticking up from 1%...which makes me say:
"Hey, I just discovered your site: Tell me WHAT'S loading! Put the name of your site on the page. Direct me to a header page that asks me if I want to see your Flash animation. Put something to read on the page while your dingus loads. Put menus and widgets there, or a graphic, or anything to hold my interest while it loads."
Sites that violate all of the above lose me in *less* than 50 milliseconds.
My site looks crap. I rarely update. komatosis.blogspot.com I cant be bothered changing the layout. Im only drunk when I update it anyway. Yet I still had 3000+ page views since I stuck the counter on.
So... Instinct, backed by the will to be right...
that sounds like it could lead to any conclusion in the mind...
the fervor inherent in religion and politics makes sense to me now!
All things are subject to interpretation, whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and n
true story
"Firefox prevented this site from opening a popup window."
Whenever I see that on a website, right there I think to myself, "This is an annoying, and/or low quality website with suspect information on it."
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"Man judges book by cover"
No sig.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
What you're referring to is prejudice, or prejudgement. Racism, as defined on wikipedia, is: Racism refers to beliefs, practices, and institutions that discriminate against people based on their perceived or ascribed "race". Primarily, it refers to an assumption that the human species can meaningfully be divided into races, together with hostility to people of certain races or a belief, conscious or unconscious, that people of different races differ in value. Some people whose thinking about others uses racial categories believe that different races can be placed on a ranked, hierarchical scale.
While prejudice on the other hand is: Prejudice is, as the name implies, the process of "pre-judging" something. It implies coming to a judgment on a subject before learning where the preponderance of evidence actually lies, or forming a judgment without direct experience. Holding a politically unpopular view is not in itself prejudice, and politically popular views are not necessarily free of prejudice. When applied to social groups, prejudice generally refers to existing biases toward the members of such groups, often based on social stereotypes; and at its most extreme, results in groups being denied benefits and rights unjustly or, conversely, unfairly showing unwarranted favor towards others.
My page.
I view that site for around 5 mins longer than i expected to. Its a fact p0rn is the end of all media.
Kind of ironic, I go to view an article that talks about how the looks of a website influence our impressions of the site within 50 ms, and the pink in the article is so bright and ugly it hurts my eyes. Needless to say, I didn't RTFA.
I'll set my site to load in 51 milliseconds!
Czech language for absolute beginners
Right. What's wrong with my website?
-- Cheers!
I'd agree - may not with in 1/5 of a second, but relativly quickly. Normally I make my judgement on a site with in a few seconds. To be fair though, with so many websites out there on the internet, why do I have to stay on a site that I dont like at first glance - I can find 20 more that will appeal to me with in 1 google.
snowulf.com
Actually, I would go see the doctor really soon.
Gee, I must be behind. I spent those first 50 milliseconds waiting for the page to load. Who are these people with such leet connections that pages load so quickly, and where can I sign up?
50 ms? This may be the case when you are just surfing around for entertainment, but I think that if you have a purpose and you are looking for some specific information, you will probably read at least a line or two. So, I guess it depends who your site is targeted to. If your site exists for the purpose of entertainment, then it better look good.
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/
I usually let my 28.8kbps connection decide if I like the site, and I am a very impatient fellow.
Who is this Jimmy character, and why was he cracking corn in the first place?
...this page
I think this is one of the very rare times that Mr Goatse is on-topic.
Oh no! Their CSS is challenging you sexuality!
It seems to me that the results suggest that humans can develop mental processes akin to Bayesian filtering.
Suppose that there are subconsciously-obvious visual cues that are generally indicative of worthwhile or worthless websites -- sufficiently obvious that they can be perceived in the space of an eyeblink -- and that, as we expand the corpus of websites to which we have been exposed, we subconsciously condition ourselves over time to recognize these cues.
The fact that lengthier review of these pages rarely changes the subject's mind may not be proof of a hastily-acquired bias, but instead offer a measure of the quality of the initial evaluation.
What, you're still reading this tripe? Must be the font.
It would probably take 50ms to decide to close a web page containing flash.
This is exactly why I love the instant-gratification of Thumbs-Downing web sites just like I do TV shows on my tivo, with stumble upon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) in firefox.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
Malcolm Gladwell in, "Blink." See, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316172324/sr=1-1 /qid=1137394659/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1304227-3896858?_ encoding=UTF8/
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Commenters on /. have for years been able to judge articles without reading anything more than a marginally accurate 3-sentence summary riddled with typos. Why would scientists think the same would not apply to impressions of websites?
Obviously another waste of government research funds that could be better applied to [insert controversial proposed government project aimed at protecting against terrorism].
By the way, I didn't have a chance to read the article.
This is cool.
Goatse.cx has been shut down. You just get an error page about policy violations now. (Don't believe me? Check for yourself!)
Imagine that. A Slashdot post linking to Goatse and *not* being a troll! =)
They have, however, relocated to goatse.ca.
Interesting, but who's web connection or web server can load a page in 50 ms? Prety much none.
it's a flash frontpage with NO alternative method of navigation...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
How long do the authors think it takes the average web-surfer to see that a page doesn't have anything they're looking for, is filled with banner adds or was laid out with an ugly-stick? 50 ms? Less?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Psychology
Bayes rules
Jan 5th 2006
From The Economist print edition
A once-neglected statistical technique may help to explain how the mind works
[IMAGE]
SCIENCE, being a human activity, is not immune to fashion. For example, one of the first mathematicians to study the subject of probability theory was an English clergyman called Thomas Bayes, who was born in 1702 and died in 1761. His ideas about the prediction of future events from one or two examples were popular for a while, and have never been fundamentally challenged. But they were eventually overwhelmed by those of the “frequentist” school, which developed the methods based on sampling from a large population that now dominate the field and are used to predict things as diverse as the outcomes of elections and preferences for chocolate bars.
Recently, however, Bayes's ideas have made a comeback among computer scientists trying to design software with human-like intelligence. Bayesian reasoning now lies at the heart of leading internet search engines and automated “help wizards”. That has prompted some psychologists to ask if the human brain itself might be a Bayesian-reasoning machine. They suggest that the Bayesian capacity to draw strong inferences from sparse data could be crucial to the way the mind perceives the world, plans actions, comprehends and learns language, reasons from correlation to causation, and even understands the goals and beliefs of other minds.
These researchers have conducted laboratory experiments that convince them they are on the right track, but only recently have they begun to look at whether the brain copes with everyday judgments in the real world in a Bayesian manner. In research to be published later this year in Psychological Science, Thomas Griffiths of Brown University in Rhode Island and Joshua Tenenbaum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology put the idea of a Bayesian brain to a quotidian test. They found that it passes with flying colours.
Prior assumptions
The key to successful Bayesian reasoning is not in having an extensive, unbiased sample, which is the eternal worry of frequentists, but rather in having an appropriate “prior”, as it is known to the cognoscenti. This prior is an assumption about the way the world works--in essence, a hypothesis about reality--that can be expressed as a mathematical probability distribution of the frequency with which events of a particular magnitude happen.
The best known of these probability distributions is the “normal”, or Gaussian distribution. This has a curve similar to the cross-section of a bell, with events of middling magnitude being common, and those of small and large magnitude rare, so it is sometimes known by a third name, the bell-curve distribution. But there are also the Poisson distribution, the Erlang distribution, the power-law distribution and many even weirder ones that are not the consequence of simple mathematical equations (or, at least, of equations that mathematicians regard as simple).
With the correct prior, even a single piece of data can be used to make meaningful Bayesian predictions. By contrast frequentists, though they deal with the same probability distributions as Bayesians, make fewer prior assumptions about the distribution that applies in any particular situation. Frequentism is thus a more robust approach, but one that is not well suited to making decisions on the basis of limited information--which is something that people have to do all the time.
Dr Griffiths and Dr Tenenbaum conducted their experiment by giving individual nuggets of information to each of the participants in their study (of which they had, in an ironically frequentist way of doing things, a total of 350), and asking them to draw a general conclusion. For example, many of the participants were told the amount of money that a film had supposedly earn
I didn't bother to RTFA, but I am positive that, since I cringed at the site's appearance, its content is utter hogwash.
...do they measure decisions made in 50 milliseconds? We need an article on that.
But yeah, it is useful, but to a larger extent than we probably realize. I can imagine that decisions aren't made solely on visual appeal, but as we see the site, we note the number of advertisements, location of information, and begin to read the information presented on the page before it is actually rejected.
I know I might (probably a LOT closer to WILL) get insulted and such forth for this, but their site looks like its designed entirely for chics, the pink makes it WAY too bright, at the very least they shoulda gone with a darker or lighter shade or something more like an Apple glass look. Also, bigger font size - at least 2 or 3 = thats like, 1 (web font size, not word editor).
Remember the old SourceForge? Easy to overview, easy to use, clean and simple.. much like Google.
.. It looks more like something out of MicroSofts site then nothing else.. I had a hard time even find the software search... On a software site!
The new SourceForge?
I still like SF, but could they please, please, with sugger on top go back to the old look?
...are my requirements. Ads should be well integrated in site, if I will have a interest, banner will earn a click from me anyway. Navigation should be easy to spot on - I usually check in five secs to see if site contains ANY information I need. If it doesn't, well, maybe I will return later. Maybe not.
And last, but certainly not least point is that site should be easy on eyes - no eye-bleeding content, no flashing (good looking moving objects are just fine), good balance. I personally think that it is one of main points why Google rocks [tm].
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Websites and women have something in common. It only takes men 50ms to decide if they're hot or not.
An article about how we judge websites instantly, on a website where the text is so small I have to squint to read it. Nice job!
I don't speak dutch.
*an infinite number of monkeys wrote this sig
It's too bad many companies still don't understand that more important to know how to find ad affiliaties and where to show the ads is where to not show the ads, and which style of ads to pick. I can imagine them needing ads, sure, but although both these sites cover e.g. Computer RPG news and reviews, there's a difference between using IGN.com and RPGDot to get them. I couldn't even see much but ads on the entire front page of IGN.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
50 milliseconds huh?
Here's my list of things that almost guarantee that I'll leave your site behind, never to look back.
1 - Music - Your taste in music is not mine. Your music sucks!
2 - Pages that don't load - It's usually the page that looks like it has exactly what you were searching for too!
3 - Pages that don't contain the information "as advertised" - you know the ones...you click on a link and it goes to some search page that tries to reset your home page.
4 - Pages that are more banner ad than web page - Get over it. No one wants to see that much advertising.
5 - Anything that blinks - Thank god the W3C deprecated the blink tag
6 - Anything that demands I install a plug-in for "the user experience" - espeically those stupid cursors
7 - Anything that spawns pop ads
8 - Anything that doesn't present easy to read and use navigation (www.thetrueagency.com/true.html is a prime example of this)
9 - Anything that doesn't have a sufficient amount of contrast between the text and the background.
10 - Anything that uses more than 5 different fonts on the same page - Its a web site, not a comic book.
11 - Sites that redirect to another redirect - We get the idea that you move - a lot.
12 - Anything that uses more than 6 colors on the same page - It looks like a circus barfed on your page.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
I've heard it from instructors, read it in books, and seen it in action (but not actually measured it): Customers gather their first impression of your business by the cleanliness and order of your establishment, the appearance of the staff, and the general atmosphere surrounding it, all in 0.3 seconds. Yes, first impressions are made in 0.3 seconds.
It's something that's pushed relatively hard in business classes, management seminars, etc., and can mean the difference between high customer turnout or your business being shut down. It's really no surprise that such a report as the topic at hand has come to light. Websites are the storefront of today, and even if you're not explicitly selling any product or service, you're "selling" your site to your visitors, hoping that they will "buy" it and spread the word, and come back for a return visit.
Am I the only person who keeps reading that headline as: "Web Site Judges Users Insanity"?
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
...to complain about not being able to see goatse.cx!
I wish people had the same brain power while operating a car.
Whenever I see that on a website, right there I think to myself, "This is an annoying, and/or low quality website with suspect information on it."
The essential and consistently-excellent Urban Legends Reference Pages site is the notable exception to this rule. (Okay, it has plenty of suspect information on it, but at least it's marked as such.) It's a shame they have those pop-ups; thankfully, FF1.5 now blocks the fastclick.net that always seemed to get past FF1.0.
The article does seem to make sense. Not certain if I believe in the 50ms...but yah, impressions do count. Take for example, I had known about Slashdot for a few years...but the first impression didn't settle in. Consequently, after my first visit I didn't visit in those years, but then Techdirt linked to it. I liked Techdirt. So I figured maybe slashdot would be not so bad...
When a visual input appears, it takes some 100 ms for the signal to get to the primary visual cortex. After some 200 ms it seems (from the outside) that you start "understanding" the signal. After some 300 ms you get the highest peak in oddball paradigms. It seems like most of the signal is processed within 800 ms, but you may see changes long after that. So that you decide about a website in 50 ms means that it is either nonsense or we have to rewrite all our knowledge on processing in the brain.
It's the same with shopping in the high street, at least for things I don't actually want to be shopping for.
If I go into a clothes shop and within the first 30 seconds can't see in which corner of the store mens' trousers are located (or whatever), then I won't hang around to play search.
Like my daddy always told me, Prejudice Saves Time.
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
As a dialup user. I often have 60 seconds or more to look at parts of the page before it loads completely, so if I decide I dislike it in x number of millisconds, it is partly a result of staring at it while it loads for over a minute, and perhaps disgust at the slow loading time.
Many sites don't even get fully loaded, since I leave them in disgust because they are taking forever to load because they have to much crap to load on the page.
Also, any site that refuses to load unless I use flash or IE gets dumped without having ever been seen by me.
Know this: the layout of /. drives me crazy when I browse is on my CrackBerry and articles like this only make it worse.
*** Don't be dull.***
Yet, they'll sit in front of a blank screen waiting for a site to load for 10 seconds.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Like your true-false whatever page. I've become so accustomed to using my extra mouse button linked with my back button, that when I try to back out of a site with a redirect (IE back button to a flash detect page, which redirects me right back to where I started,) it just bugs the s**t out of me! Also on some CGI-laden pages which require a repost of data when you hit the back button (that's mostly on things which don't involve $... if I'm worried about being double-charged I'll navigate within the page.)
Theoretically possible solution:
100ms for the signal to get to the cortex. Discard that, you don't "see" yet. Then while you try to understand it, within next 200ms, simultaneously as the image is being analysed the "first impression" processing takes place, and before you even know what you see, you have a certain feeling towards it.
Most probable solution:
Someone put 'ms' where 's' should go.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
NOT 50ms.
200ms okay. 100ms barely. 50ms no.
I know I can seek a picture in a directory filled with JPEGs by holding down space in IrfanView (resulting in a blur of pictures showing up in fullscreen preview, about 4-6 a second) and I find it easily (though always needing to go back, sometimes 10 or so pics, the signal to release space bar travels way slower to my hand than "match" signal from visual input).
24FPS is the minimum animation speed for people not to see separate frames. That's 40ms. At 50ms (20FPS) you catch basic glimpses of the frames but only the strongest most empacized "MY SCHWEEET BLOGGIE" pink may get through and result in any kind of reaction. Most of content with more ballanced color scheme will pass as non-distinct blur.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Nothing new, every webmaster knows the tip. You just add one or two subliminal pages just before displaying your main page. I did it for my own website and the visitors are now blogging about it like crazy, leading to huge traffic. What you put in your sublimal pages is up to you but remember it must load fast and be displayed only for 25-40ms.
Million Dollar Screenshot
Oh, the irony. That article has the world's tiniest font on there. Their layout/navigation might look nice, but if you can't read the articles without about fifty words to a line, it's not worth it. These sorts of rapid studies will not determine if a page is nice to read, but only get views on the layout and navigational elements.
Their good web design and configuration are certainly a big part of it, but, er... they're not exactly on a level playing field with the average website.
If I had this network available, I reckon I could get a graphics-rich page to load pretty damn quickly... Just looking at those connections is making me get all hot and bothered.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert
When you get warning about missing plugins, you can see that the site is using Flash or another technique -- which should almost NEVER be used on the first page of a site.....
So you are trying to tell us you just read playboy.com for the mirror files...
this is loaner...my sig is in the shop
Funny, I see [an impression of low quality due to pop-ups] every time I go to cnn.com...
So do you prefer FOXNews.com, which doesn't have pop-ups?
.. but I know what I don't like when I see it!
Stuff like Flash index pages with "mystery-meat" buttons that don't tell you what they do until you mouse-over them (but first you gotta guess where the buttons are).
Also front pages that are cluttered with so much stuff that it's hard to loacte the items of interest.
I hope by know that most web professional developers have realized that flashing text and animated graphics are just plain annoying.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Here's a really nice webpage. I mean a nice example of a web page that sucks!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Mozilla & friends.
Pop unders? Haven't seen em in years.
Should I be disturbed that you seem to be that familiar with that?
Frankly, I never knew that there was anything but hello.jpg there, and that only thanks to the damn trolls here *mutter*
I judge websites instantly and automatically for the 'OMG What's this 'Firefox' thing you are using, which version of IE is it?' that appear from time to time.
Exactly why the redesign I've been doing for the hot tub company I now work for I'm trying to make it look nicer and make it less busy. The old site (the one you'd see if you follow the link) was ugly, busy looking, and empty looking all at once. Not a good combination. The new site which should be up within a week or so is carefully designed to make navigation and searching easy, to be nice looking, and to make a good first impression. The owners have been fighting me as they think the new website isn't busy enough looking but I think I've finally got them convinced that users need to be able to process the information on the pages quickly.
Having some skill in both user-interface design and graphic design should be a must for every website team. I don't think any experienced web designers or programmers would find this article surprising at all. When you're looking through search results you look through at most the top ten (top three is more common) and if you don't see what you're looking for you try a different search. At each website you tend to glance for a very small time to see if they look professional and if they look like they have what you're looking for. If not then users tend to leave without investigating further.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Well I think Slashdot looks horrible, but I still read their news, but mostly through the RSS reader in Safari.
I am dealing with this issue right now with my own site. I am trying to improve traffic and it is just not working to well. It seems that most people do not like the flashing and all of the banners. Remove those and they seem to stay longer but the secret is in just getting them to your site and if in the first seconds they don't like it then more than likely you have lost them for good. So I do agree first impressions are everything is this business. Take this from a novice who is still trying to learn the ropes. I experience this daily.
Fell free to inspect my site and tell me what your opinion or thoughts were in the first seconds. http://www.extreme-home-and-food-network.com/
The first three paragraphs don't make any sense and should be cut out. The next one is vaguely interesting. But even the name of the thing makes no sense. There is nothing Extreme about country cosmetics. Nor is it a Home and Food Network. You should call it something like Ozark Country Artisan Connection and use a sage green rather than girly pink. As for prose, less is more. You can have Our Goals.htm somewhere. You also need an English coach! Good luck!