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Half a page

Written by István Fekete | Aug 20, 2026, 3:43:18 PM

The average visitor gets about halfway down on your homepage and stops. The rest may as well not exist. Just check your Google Analytics or Hotjar data. 

So the top of your page isn't the start of your argument. For most people it is the whole argument.

In a peer-reviewed experiment, people saw website screenshots for 50 milliseconds. Then 17. They still formed consistent judgments about them. Two things drove those judgments: how cluttered the page looked, and how familiar it looked for its kind.

Fifty milliseconds is not reading. It's recognition.

In behavior science this is called this fast thinking. It's fast, because It runs before you decide to think, and its first question isn't "what does this company do?" It's "do I know this kind of place, and is it for someone like me?"

If the answer comes back yes, the slow deliberate part wakes up and starts reading. If nothing comes back at all, the visitor leaves without ever learning what you sell, and your analytics records it as a bounce with no explanation attached.

That's why general statements fail. There is nothing this fast self of the reader can recognize.

However, keep in mind that you can't be recognised by everybody. Just think about it: do you know everyone from your town? Yes, if the number of inhabitants is like 100 people. But if not? So pick the one visitor you want and put them in the first line, in the words they already use about themselves.

If you need help, just head over to my website and run a website/funnel audit. 

Featured image: Kazimir Malevich, Black Square 1913 © State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow