Did I say 7-10 seconds? I meant 4...
Wednesday November 8, 2006
You want your Web pages to load as quickly as possible, but the accepted rule of thumb has been that 7 seconds was probably fine. Well, no longer. Akamai and JupiterResearch have conducted a study that shows that the average surfer will wait 4 seconds for the page to load before abandoning it to find somewhere else to shop. The report said that the speed of a Web site was second only to high prices/shipping costs in causing dissatisfied customers.
Comments
Considering Broadband connection is getting close to 100% in USA and around 70% in North Western Europe, plus of course Singapore, Hoing Kong and Japan, and even some areas in the Middle East; yes for those areas about 3-4 seconds is a very reasonable average.
But for the rest of the the world (i.e. about 80%+ of world population), like East Eurpe, Asia, Africa and most of South America the 7-8 seconds is still very much valid. Not because of more patience, but because of slower connections. People get accustomed to what they have or can afford.
Don Pedro
I think people are way more patient than that. All those AOL users would have to be. With firewalls and antivirus programs taking over computers, I think people are very accustomed to being patient. 4 seconds is in a flash. The only thing that loads that fast are pages I’ve already visited. msn .com takes about about that long sometimes. I’m on broadband.
For sites I frequent, I think it’s a 10 second rule of mind. 20 seconds, I close the page. The only pages I expect to load without delay are corporate pages like yahoomail, comcast, my bank, my service providers. Other pages I am more patient with due to ad-content like about, anywho and merriam-webster. New sites, software sites, information sites: I usually have about 10 seconds of patience before I question what I clicked on. But I will let it load up till about 20 seconds in, even then, I’ve clicked on another tab already. Personal sites I am more patient with, blogs and such. I can ignore the page while it loads, and the most patience I’ve ever extended is about 30 seconds and that’s only if the page was recommended. I don’t visit sites like myspace because of their load time. But I will wait indefinitely for Foamy the Squirrel to load over at illwill (maybe 45 seconds, but in reality I think it’s 25 seconds).