Hard to believe, in the 9 years I’ve been involved in web development, I have always been aware of an “8 second rule” – that being the maximum time a web page should take to download. Knowing that typically forced me to optimize my images and page code (tabled, sadly) to the degreeN. With broadband access slowly creeping up to becoming the lowest common denominator as far as internet access goes, I thought I could at least relax a little bit, but then comes along this study. If you do the math, it’s probably a wash based on access speeds and new programming technologies used to enhance user-experience.
Below is the meat of the study findings, but you can read the full press release on the Akamai Technologies Inc. website.
Consumers will not wait more than 4 seconds for a web page to download says a new survey conducted by JupiterResearch for Akamai Technologies Inc. Speed of downloading is most important to those with the longest online experience and highest spending, the study says.
The study says more than one-third of shoppers with a poor experience abandoned the site entirely, while 75% were likely not to shop on that site again. In addition, nearly 30% of dissatisfied customers will either develop a negative perception of the company or tell their friends and family about the experience, Jupiter says.
The report says poor site performance ranks behind only high prices and shipping costs as leading factors for dissatisfaction among online shoppers.
The study was based on a survey of 1,058 online shoppers during the first half of 2006.
Other finds include:
- Half of online shoppers with two or more years tenure shopping online or who spend more than $1,500 annually identify page loading time as a top priority for online sites.
- 46% of online shoppers insist on rapid checkout, with 55% of shoppers who spend $1,500 or more demanding the same.
Well, I guess there’s always a reason to keep your nose to the grindstone! Happy coding everyone and go get that money.
I read this yesterday and had some of the same thoughts. This, in correlation with the fact that there are over 100 million websites, means that people have more ‘junk’ to wade through to find their content. People are desensitized to many different things now, and it just inspires me to work harder and create better content.
The obvious of coding properly to W3C recommendations, optimizing your server side language of choice, and optimizing your server itself (OS, Database) will allow you to achieve those times you are looking for.
It will be interesting to see how this Christmas season plays out and the jump in traffic for many sites.