The importance of web design pops up again this week, in a couple of places. First is a study performed by the interactive marketing solutions firm Questus and covered in a post on ClickZ. While the study itself is unfindeable on the Questus site (moving page elements that cover up main navigation don’t help the matter), the ClickZ article mentions the following results:
Critical to making a decision to purchase goods on a Web site are site navigation (37 percent); the checkout process (32 percent); and product descriptions (38 percent). Perspective buyers left e-commerce sites without purchasing for a few key reasons. Twenty-nine percent didn’t want to register with the site; 22 percent of online shoppers found it difficult to locate products; and 17 percent left to find other e-tailers because they didn’t believe the site they were on was trustworthy or secure.
Questus concluded that “web sites have three seconds to make an impression”.
Which is interesting, because another study that got mention on the blog from User Interface Engineering, this one from Carleton University in Ottawa Canada concluded that users form lasting impressions about a site in 50 Milliseconds. UIE’s Christine Perfetti took issue with the study’s conclusions, though, noting:
From what I can tell, the researchers didn’t find any actual evidence that users will leave a site after 50 milliseconds if they find a site visually unappealing. The problem with Lindgaard’s conclusions is that the research didn’t study how users behave when they’re trying to accomplish their tasks.
More important than trying to figure out just how much time users are going to give you is UIE’s conclusion that, based upon the ongoing success of “not the prettiest in the world” sites like Craigslist:
In all of our research studying user behavior, we see that visual aesthetics play a role in users’ judgments — but they take a backseat to the site’s content.
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Dave J. on January 20, 2006