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Web Users Judge Sites Instantly

Posted by Zonk on from the quick-learners dept.

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...'"

2 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Navigations and ads by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    1. Re:Navigations and ads by bit01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Another big determiner for me, on major sites anyway, is time-to-load. I'll frequently abort a page before it's even finished if I'm not reading something else.

      A long time-to-load probably means a badly configured server, or graphics heavy and often content free site. If a graphics rich site like BBC news can get it right, why can't anybody else?

      Incidentally, 50ms can't be right - very few web sites take less than that to load.

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      Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available and copyable.