Users form an opinion about your website in 50 milliseconds (0.05 s)
Verified Confidence: medium
Primary source found; it says the same thing, the scope matches, and it is reasonably current.
- Commonly cited as
- "You have 0.05 seconds to make a good first impression"
- True origin
- Lindgaard, Fernandes, Dudek & Brown (Carleton University) — Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression! (Behaviour & Information Technology 25(2))
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- 2006
- Data as of
- 2006
- Last checked
- What the source says
Study 3 again replicated the 500 ms condition as well as adding a 50 ms condition using the same stimuli
- Method & sample
- Three lab studies; small student samples (e.g. 22 and 31 participants) rated the visual appeal of web homepages shown for 500 ms and 50 ms.
- Drift between quote and source
- Scope: often stretched from 'visual appeal rating' to trust, credibility or whether users stay
- Interest
- n/a
Safe rephrasing
A 2006 lab study found people's ratings of a homepage's visual appeal after 50 ms were consistent with ratings after longer exposure.
Sources we opened
- Lindgaard et al. 2006 (PDF) (primary)
Machine-readable: /api/claims/website-first-impression-50-milliseconds.json · Last checked 2026-10-16