Universal Principles of UX

15

First impressions matter.

An impression is made in the blink of an eye—or ten seconds. From research done at Microsoft by Chao Liu, Ryen W. White, and Susan Dumais, we know that if users don’t see or understand the value of a web page within ten seconds, they’ll leave. That’s because users know that they will easily be able to find whatever it is that they need somewhere else. Ten seconds is all we get to make a first impression and convince people to stay.

So what constitutes a good first impression? Surprisingly it’s not the content. It’s the design. People tend to mistrust digital products that are poorly designed. If people don’t like the layout, typography, imagery, and color schemes at first glance, they won’t care about the content ...