Hire a Designer Today
Wow - this is compelling. According to research by Gitte Lindgaard of Ottawa’s Carleton University, we make judgements about websites in the flash of an eye. And these snap judgements stand up to judgements made after longer scrutiny. So apparently we CAN judge a book (website) by its cover (home page).
Lindgaard and her team presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal. Even though the images flashed up for just 50 milliseconds, roughly the duration of a single frame of standard television footage, their verdicts tallied well with judgements made after a longer period of scrutiny.
Pretty interesting. The explanation of why this happens makes humans seem pretty fickle but no doubt it is true. We are fickle creatures.
Bottom line: Hire a designer if you’re serious about having a presence on the web.
And trust your designers - if they say that dancing bears (or flashing banners, crazy flash designs, or any other common web sin) won’t help to sell your product or service… trust them.