Users will judge your website within 50 milliseconds.

The guys at Google at pretty good at understanding how people use technology and how they react to it. In one of their studies, they looked how people judge a website within 50 milliseconds. They tried to see what people prefer. Simple or complex websites. Unique or similar designs. The result of their research is pretty clear:

Users strongly prefer website designs that look both simple (low complexity) and familiar (high prototypicality).

Usual is OK

What this study tells us is that people are OK with websites that look similar one to the other. In a certain way that websites use similar designs helps users navigate those websites and understand them quicker. As the Google team says:

Designs that contradict what users typically expect of a website may hurt users’ first impression and damage their expectations.

You want your website to look completely different from your competition? That’s maybe not the best idea. If your website re-uses standards of your industry your customers will prefer it. This doesn’t mean you should be exactly the same, it means that there are certain standards that you don’t need to re-invent.

Keep it stupid simple

There is in design the K.I.S.S. principle. This acronym stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid”. The guys at Google bring the data that proves this principle to be right. Simple and straightforward is OK. You don’t need to impress people by having complex structures or content. You can be a bit boring and be simple.