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Web Users Judge Sites Instantly

Posted by Zonk on Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:57 AM
from the quick-learners dept.
The Internet Science
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...'"
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  • That's Crap (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cobralisk (666114) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:00AM (#14479755)
    This article is obviously rubbish
  • But is it as fast as getting slashdotted?

  • Duh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer (648696) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:02AM (#14479762) Homepage
    Well, let me be the first to say "Duh, of course we do."

    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.

    • Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)

      by pomo monster (873962) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:54AM (#14479945)
      That's exactly why I resent grammar/spelling nazis--if everyone followed their advice, it'd be harder at a glance to filter out the idiots.

      (That said, some of the smartest people I know are dyslexic. And rulebreakers in general.)
        • Don't mean to be a poop, but if I type teh, it is a typo, not a spelling error. I know that there are people that do it on purpose, but you can't systematically write someone off as stupid because their left hand is slightly faster than their right hand...

      • Actually the problem are those people who don't learn what information to avoid.

        What are you doing reading /. then?

      • Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)

        by Blakey Rat (99501) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:37AM (#14479891)
        So Hitler didn't fund the Illuminadi after being abducted by big-headed aliens in a UFO in the Bermuda Triangle while covering-up his involvement in the American Civil War? Impossible!

  • /. Design (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2006, @01:04AM (#14479770)
    This is why I kept away from /. for so many years

  • "Like the look of our website?" (Score:5, Funny)

    by strobexii (601986) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:06AM (#14479779)
    It hasn't stopped us from visiting Slashdot. Over and over and over again...

  • Funny... (Score:5, Funny)

    by versiondub (694793) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:06AM (#14479781) Homepage
    I thought playboy.com was drivel when I was a young lad...but over the course of about 5 years, that all changed.

  • Ironically... (Score:3, Funny)

    by saladasalad (817881) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:08AM (#14479791)
    it took me just 50 milliseconds to disagree with that article!

  • Navigations and ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AuMatar (183847) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:11AM (#14479800)
    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.

    • Re:Navigations and ads (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bit01 (644603) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:59AM (#14479959)

      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 [bbc.co.uk] 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.

      ---

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

      • Re:Navigations and ads (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2006, @03:32AM (#14480262)
        Incidentally, 50ms can't be right - very few web sites take less than that to load.

        Yes, and if you read the article, it's clear that the study does not show what it claims to:

        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.

        But there is a major flaw. When the image is gone, the participants don't automatically stop making judgements about it.

        50 ms (a.k.a. three refreshes at 60 Hz) is long enough for a person to see something and remember basically what it looks like. In fact, your mind will continue to perceive the image well after the display has gone away. This phenomenon is part of what used to be called 'persistence of vision'.

        So when the experimenters ask the subject a few seconds later what their impression was, and the subject takes a second or two to indicate a preference, this is not necessarily a 50 ms snap judgement. There are whole seconds during which the image was probably being thought about.

        Now, it may be possible that a snap judgement really can be made in 50 ms. But this study does nothing to prove that.
  • 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? :)

  • Oh Dear (Score:5, Informative)

    by HotmanParisHiltonKam (944151) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:14AM (#14479809)
    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."

    The human reaction time is about .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.

    • Re:Oh Dear (Score:5, Informative)

      by SnowZero (92219) on Monday January 16 2006, @02:25AM (#14480037)
      You are definitely on the right track, though its not clear if its the article summary that's botched or the study itself. Trained cognitive psychologists at least should know better, so I'd lean toward an innacurate summary. The title should probably read "users can judge websites after seeing them for only 50 msec". The "photographic" effect you are referring to is called after-image, and can last long after the initial stimulus is gone. They could make a stronger claim than I stated above if they put up a visual distraction image after the 50 msec (visual memory studies do this a lot). But the summary doesn't mention it so we can't know for sure.

      Regarding human reaction time, it varies depending on the task, but rarely is less than 100 msec (usually when you expect something to happen, such as runners starting a race). That means some tasks can be completed faster than 250 msec thouch, so that's not a good lower bound to quote if you are trying to debunk something. 50 msec certainly is too fast for anything I'd call "judgement" though, as people usually cannot even press a button that fast in response to an event.

      At any rate, the slashdot summary is far from an accurate description of the phenomenon, but since when is that news...

      P.S. I am not a psychologist, but I do have a B.S. double in cognitive science.

    • Re:Oh Dear (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Eivind (15695)
      I agree. Looking at something for 50 milliseconds, and then judging does not imply that we judge in 50 milliseconds.

      That claim is as stupid as blinking someone '15*31' for 100ms, and then, when the person is (eventually!) able to say what that is, claim the person does multiplication in his head in 100ms, he does nothing of the sort.

  • A perfect example being... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Steamhead (714353) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:14AM (#14479810) Homepage
    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.

  • goatse.cx (Score:4, Funny)

    by heatdeath (217147) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:15AM (#14479816)
    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*

  • Gee, you'd think the article wasn't any good... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hosiah (849792) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:21AM (#14479842)
    from the response it's getting. No kidding, people make snap judgements about *everything* in about 50 milliseconds. That's about how long it takes for you to decide if a member of the preferred sex is attractive to you, whether an offered kind of food looks appealing, whether or not a suspect is guilty when you hear their arrest break on the news, whether or not you like the TV channel you just flipped to...nothing special about web pages.

    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.

    • I think it takes people 50ms or so to decide if anything is attractive -- opposite sex, website, car, etc.

      Another interesting thing is that given that people generally agree if something looks attractive or not, there is an objective reason to say that things are pretty or not. This makes it similar to quorum algorithms in distributed systems: pretty is what most people think is attractive. Ugly is what most people think is not attractive.

  • Firefox contributes to the effect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saskboy (600063) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:23AM (#14479848) Homepage Journal
    "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."

  • In other news: (Score:5, Funny)

    by humungusfungus (81155) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:23AM (#14479850)
    "Man judges book by cover"

  • Looks like someone's been reading... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Errandboy of Doom (917941) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:26AM (#14479859) Homepage
    Blink [amazon.com] by Malcolm Gladwell.

  • Well documented by: (Score:3, Informative)

    by grolaw (670747) on Monday January 16 2006, @01:59AM (#14479961) Journal
    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/ [amazon.com]

    Nothing to see here. Move along.

  • Known for Years at Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by mattwarden (699984) on Monday January 16 2006, @02:01AM (#14479966) Homepage
    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.

  • "good" ads, navigation and easy on eyes... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pecisk (688001) on Monday January 16 2006, @02:32AM (#14480054)
    ...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].

  • Agreed about this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jugalator (259273) on Monday January 16 2006, @02:38AM (#14480067) Journal
    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 [ign.com] and RPGDot [rpgdot.com] to get them. I couldn't even see much but ads on the entire front page of IGN.

  • Web Site Peeves (Score:5, Interesting)

    by queenb**ch (446380) on Monday January 16 2006, @02:44AM (#14480081) Homepage Journal
    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

  • I wish... (Score:3, Funny)

    by SQLz (564901) on Monday January 16 2006, @03:12AM (#14480189) Homepage Journal
    I wish people had the same brain power while operating a car.
    • I agree. It's probably some cutesy thing that the web designer/admin had in mind since Valentine's day is coming up I guess. What a freaking moron. Everyone knows that all nerds are alone on Valentine's day, even the ones that are married. (-_-)
    • What you're referring to is prejudice, or prejudgement. Racism [wikipedia.org], 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 rac

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