That moment you click on a link and are taken to a website and you say ‘WOW, I LOVE THIS!’

You love it instantly.

You feel really good about it. But what’s really going on?

You haven’t even read it yet.

All you got was a wonderful feeling.

Why does this happen? Is it magic?

It is most likely that you are reacting to the images, color palette, fonts, the layout and its inherent simplicity–that magic combination!

A study by Google presents two important concepts:

  • that users will judge websites as beautiful or not within 1/50th to 1/20th of a second.
  • that “visually complex” websites are consistently rated as less beautiful than their simpler counterparts.

They go on by saying that

“a websites’ first impression is known to be a crucial moment for capturing the users interest. Within a fraction of time, people build a first visceral “gut feeling” that helps them to decide whether they are going to stay at this place or continue surfing to other sites.”

According to the Stanford Web Credibility Research  it is suggested that

“we find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more.”

They continue to say that the visual design also needs to match the site’s purpose.

When you read the content on a beautiful website, do you read it differently after having such a positive initial feeling?

If the same content was on a less-than beautiful webpage, would you feel the same about the content?

I would love to hear your comments below.


At WebgirlPower, Lorie and I create beautiful websites. Lorie is an amazing graphic artist and together with my website and online marketing skills we create websites that are not only simple and beautiful but fit perfectly with your purpose and business goals.

Andrea Cinnamond is a creative online visibility strategist and implementation specialist (she makes things happen). She is a trained business coach, technical virtual assistant and a certified online business manager. She is an ex-high tech scientist and she loves to combine the logical steps of a process with her creative nature.

Her #1 value is beauty and she loves nothing more than creating beautiful projects for her clients such as websites that work, quizzes, email list building projects, training and coaching programs, and many other cool online offerings.

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