Website Evaluations – First Impressions Matter

Genie Tyburski at The Virtual Chase (an excellent site, by the way) reports on a January 13, 2006 article in Nature by Michael Hopkin entitled “Web Users Judge Sites in the Blink of an Eye“. The article reports on a study from Carleton University that flashed websites in front of volunteers who were asked to then rank the sites based on visual appeal. The study found that volunteers were able to make impressions about the websites in 50 milliseconds!

On her site, Genie makes a good point that information professionals need to be aware that many users may default to first impressions and that we need to continue to remind people to evaluate online information on more reliable grounds. Alastair Smith’s online “Evaluation of Information Sources” (last updated 20 December 2005) continues to provide links to good sites on the evaluation of online information.