A visitor decides whether to stay almost immediately — understanding what they're actually evaluating helps explain why they leave.
The first, fastest judgement a visitor makes is whether they've landed somewhere relevant to what they were looking for — a mismatch here, even a subtle one, often ends the visit before anything else is even read.
Almost simultaneously, a visitor is unconsciously scanning for signs the site is legitimate and trustworthy — professional design, absence of obvious red flags, some visible evidence of real substance behind the page.
Even a relevant, credible-seeming page loses a visitor who can't quickly identify what to do next — the absence of an obvious action, within those first few seconds, is enough to lose an otherwise interested visitor.
All three judgements happen before most visitors scroll at all — meaning the content visible without scrolling carries outsized responsibility for whether the visitor stays long enough to see anything else.
Find out what your own first screen is actually communicating.
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