How many times have you picked up a magazine because of what is on the cover? How many other magazines did you see that didn’t catch your eye? Online we have even shorter attention spans these days (9 to 5 seconds is the new number) because our options are so vast we have no patience. Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group, told BBC that “People want sites to get to the point. They have very little patience.”
Visitors to a website or a piece of social media content are heavily influenced by first impressions. How something is designed is not more important than content, but it certainly helps to keep the attention and interest.
Graphic design is visual information management with the main goal to display a strong visual hierarchy that can lead a viewers eye through a page. We scan pages when we first come to a site, looking for elements that capture our eye and then fine tune our vision to investigate deeper. Present the most important information first with the greatest emphasis.
Pictures
Pictures and images help with creating first impressions. I am always surprised whenever I am on Digg and a post doesn’t have a thumbnail image by it, even some posts in the IMAGES category. But pictures all over the page chaotically are distracting and do not create and contrast that attracts the eye. The design must strike the right balance to drive attention with visual contrast and the feeling of organization. And there must be some relevance in the picture, have it connect with the other content.
Direction
Direction can be an element that is used to create movement that a users eye will follow through the design. Does your content have a lead in image or a title with a larger font size ? Where is it placed? Is it the largest image/font size in your design or are all the images/fonts the same size? Create contrast with size, color, and shape.
Load Time
Page load times are another way to secure first impressions. Does it take longer than a few seconds for your page to load? I might not have seen it then, same for a lot of other potential viewers. Like Nielsen said, I am impatient with a site when it takes long to load unless I know what the potential content will be or if I need to access it. If a page loads quickly then I may be more likely to navigate further into the site knowing I won’t have to wait long for more content.
Navigation
Designing with navigation in mind can drive traffic further into a site. Including internal links in the content will encourage users to view additional pages. The more content that they may be interested in, like the 5 different forms of social media news momentum, the better for everyone.
Bite Sized
Make it easier on the reader by breaking the content up into bite sizes. Simple paragraphs, highlighted or bold words, lists and white space so that the eye can flow around the content smoothly. Look at the example below of UseIt.com‘s simple way to organize the content with a big title font and then small summary highlighted in a yellow box- then the full text underneath it.
How is your page being viewed? Find out how people see your website, photo or ad and which areas are getting most of the attention with a free heat-mapping service at feng-gui.com. It uses an algorithm that predicts what the human eye will be most likely to be looking at. This algorithm reaches a 70% of accuracy compared with Eye and Mouse Tracking.
For further reading elsewhere, check out Jakob Nielsen’s top ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability. Here he talks about how potential customers will get a first impression of your homepage, company, and decide whether or not to do business with you based on that impression.
If you have the content to drive in traffic then don’t drive it away with bad design. Follow some of these simple guidelines and it can help with the first impressions people get.
What do you think helps and hurts first impression on a page? What about widgets and add ons, do you like them or are they overbearing? Social media site links and submit options, should they be on the top of the page or on the bottom of the content (when you finish reading it)?
ICONS!
Icons, yes, are they useful or over done in your opinion? Thanks for getting in on the discussion evolver
Great post. I like the eye tracking stuff, but I wouldn’t want to use it with 70% accuracy. I’m sure as the algo gets more advanced it will go up.
This is a great post. I really hate busy sites. I have a mommy blog and have just redesigned it. I’m striving to make it less visually overwhelming, but I fear I have not accomplished that. I’m assuming there are people and services that would charge for an evaluation of a website/blog and help make it more pleasing. Do you have any recommendations?
Nice post! One of the things I work frequently on with clients is to help them format their content to make it get the respect it will need from social media users.
Jeremy, the best segmentation algorithm has 67% accuracy, and we all still use at the Magic Wand in Photoshop.
Excellent post Patrick,
Think this is the most important part of SEO that may leave out. Just because you rank well doesn’t mean you will get a good bounce rate, sell a products, get more users etc. Because if your site loads to slow, looks like amateur, or out dated must like people will just click the back button and look at the other results in the serps..
I think alot people don’t realize that design can actually improve bounce rates and leads better then a increase in traffic.
Wow!!Great post!!This would really really make a sense. I love what you advice on us. You're right that the design and appearance has also something to do to increase traffic for website.Also, you're right about the load time. if the load time was to slow, visitors might abandoned the page.Thanks for having this.
Patrick, this guideline is very useful to me as a designer. Beautiful design without content has no effect on visitors, but quality content without good presentation through design makes no sense either. Yes, content needs to be presented in a way to entice people.
When I visit a site and it takes ages to load, I simply move on to another site. This happens in, but not limited to some sites that heavily rely on unnecessary Flash items.
I have a short attention span and I really want any site I visit to get to the point. Unfortunately, some use designs that go through the rigmarole of circling the wagon and off I go.
I agree with you that visitors to a website or a piece of social media content get influenced by first impressions of the landing page even without going through the content and judging the quality. Normally, visitors like easy/quick operation, more info per page and less links without being directed to other sites.
Hello Patrick,
I am 100% agree with u that Social networking sites look(design and appearance and loading time )matter for traffic to come…may be people register once but they won't come for 2nd time if these things are not good…
Attention to those details makes the difference. Thank you!
What a sweet topic. I visit myspace, facebook less and less becasue ogf the time it takes to surf the site. I hate waiting on pages to load and moving quick ont he net is important especially when you make your living online. As a web design company time is very important and the faster we can market, create a web design surf the web the better we are as a company. So anyway……….we stay away from sluggish over traffic sites not to mention the site with high traffic have a better chance of giving you a virus. Just like being in a crowed room, you are more likely to catch a cold or something from someone….Just FYI you fields in the name e-mail and website boxes are very slow to type in. May want to tweek your cache