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...
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
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.
it took me just 50 milliseconds to disagree with that article!
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?
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
...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!
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.
I wish people had the same brain power while operating a car.
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.
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
I think he prefers BBC News instead. We all do.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
.. 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.