Why good design is so important
An interesting study by researchers at the Carleton University in Ontario provides evidence that Web users form an opinion about a Web site in some cases before they even discern the contents of the page. Researchers flashed pictures of Web sites for as little as 50 milliseconds, and test subjects were still able to form a judgment about what they saw. 1
From the article:
"...the strong impact of the visual appeal of the site seemed to draw attention away from usability problems. This suggests that aesthetics, or visual appeal, factors may be detected first and that these could influence how users judge subsequent experience.... Hence, even if a website is highly usable and provides very useful information presented in a logical arrangement, this may fail to impress a user whose first impression of the site was negative." - (Lindgaard 2006)
What this study re-enforces is that even though usability is an important aspect of any Web design, you can not overlook the emotional response to good design. Your users are going to make decisions about your site, based on their visual impressions—and this study seems to show that this occurs a lot quicker that one might have imagined.
Make sure you do a usability study, add some useful and cool functionality, and provide top notch content, but just don't forget skimp on the design.
[1] First Impressions Count in Website Design, http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/blink/ , posted January 17, 2006, viewed February 2, 2006↩
