Several months back I blogged about the 3 Second Rule. For years, I have considered the 3 Second Rule to be the single most important rule that I work by. In my experience, you either live by the 3 Second Rule, or you die by the 3 Second Rule. It's also my most commonly read blog entry, and for good reason; it's the single most important entry I have ever written. When I talk to new clients, work with interns, or other people who are entering the world of the web, I always start with the 3 Second Rule. If the 3 Second Rule were the only thing they knew about building a website, they would build a better website than most professionals.
After years of making noise about it, it's interesting to see that it's finally starting to be picked up by other marketers. If we can get this message to the designers, mabye we can finally start making the web easier to use, and more powerful.
Here are a few links and excerpts that I found recently that support the 3 Second Rule:
Google and the Internet have trained us to ruthlessly sort for relevance, and we now demand messaging formatted for, and adapted to, rapid sorting. If visitors can’t get on your website, perform a 7-second scan and immediately see exactly:
- what it is you do,
- what your offering, and
- why they should care,
those visitors will leave.
Akamai and JupiterResearch Identify '4 Seconds' as the New Threshold of Acceptability for Retail Web Page Response Times
Web Rage Only Takes 4 Seconds to Activate
What’s the root cause of Mouse Rage Syndrome? It’s primarily caused by badly designed and hosted Web sites, according to the research center.
The experts agree, live by the 3 Second Rule or die by the 3 Second Rule.
Cheers,
Chris
