Recently, I was helping a client figure out why his web site was not getting many opt-ins, despite lots of traffic. Being as research and fact oriented as I am (I now know this because I just took the Kolbe Personality Test; I highly recommend it for you and your staff – more on that next month), I started to dig into the research. I had always heard that it takes seven seconds to make a first impression, but I soon found out that only applies to in-person encounters. The stats on websites are much different.
First Impressions are Always True
The results were mind-boggling. Seven seconds is an eternity compared to the amount of time it takes to make an impression in the super high-speed world of the Internet. It takes shockingly less time than seven seconds…try 50 milliseconds! That’s 1/20 of a second for us non-math people.
