Did you know that it only takes consumers one tenth of one second to obtain a first impression about another person? Studies show that making snap judgements is actually one of our minds most impressive abilities. This ability to form impressions so quickly is not at all restricted to people. In fact, other studies have shown that it takes 50 milliseconds or even less for most users to decide whether they like a certain website or print design and whether or not they will engage or ignore your message.

No matter what message you are trying to send or medium you are utilising to reach your target audience, they may choose to ignore you within less than 50 milliseconds. This clearly shows the importance of professional design and its ability to create an effective first impression.

Google’s Research

Google recently took a deeper look into first impressions regarding web design. In the study, they re-enforced the 50 millisecond timeframe for building a first impression. Although this first impression depends on a variety of different factors including spacing, symmetry, fonts, structure and content, there are two primary design factors that play the most significant role:

Visual Complexity – Refers to the complexity of the visual design as a whole
Prototypicality – Refers to how a design fits within its category, does the design look like users think it should (similar to others in the industry/category)?

Visual designs that were overly-complex and unfamiliar designs that don’t fit with their category were seen as less attractive by the individuals in the study. As a takeaway from this study, professional designers and business owners should understand that users like simple and familiar designs. Success will be far less likely with innovative and unconventional layouts.

Essential Elements

On average, it takes a little over 2.5 seconds for a consumer’s eyes to focus on a specific area of your design that has the largest impact on their first impression. Eye-movement studies have shown which elements are most important within a design. With any print design, advertisement or web application, the company logo comes first. Typical users spend over 6 seconds focusing on this one key element. On webpages, the second most important element is the main navigation menu, followed by the search box.

Other essential elements of a design include the primary image, written content and “footer.” Since first impressions make such a huge difference in engagement and viewing duration, professional designers should focus on making these key elements look amazing.

Professional Design Emphasis

Almost everyone can remember a time when their parent or professor emphasised the importance of first impressions for job interviews, but some don’t realise how strongly this same idea affects the creation of a great design.

Professional designers know how to develop a design that presents the best first impression possible, and without a good first impression, none of your amazing strategies, campaigns, products or services will matter. In the blink of an eye, your target consumers will simply turn around and ignore your powerful message.