4 Seconds Loading Time Is Maximum For Websurfers

nieske writes "Of course we all want webpages to load as fast as possible, but now research has finally shown it: four seconds loading time is the maximum threshold for websurfers. Akamai and JupiterResearch have conducted a study among 1,000 online shoppers and have found, among other results, that one third of respondents have, at one point, left a shopping website because of the overall 'poor experience.' 75% of them do not intend ever to come back to this website again. Online shopper loyalty also increases as loading time of webpages decreases. Will this study finally show developers of shopping websites the importance of the performance of their websites?"

Comments

Disturbing...

[rasmusneckelmann]

One of the main reasons why I'm considering upgrading my 233-MHz laptop, is not because it's slow at doing heavy calculations (like Matlab, etc), but because it will soon to be impossible to surf the 'net. Not only are webpages growing larger and larger kB-wise, but they're also using increasingly more CPU resources when loading. Why is it necesary for my poor laptop to run at 100% CPU usage for a long time, just because I want to view a website? When gmail just came out it worked perfectly fast on my computer, but more and more javascript have been stuffed into it, so now it's almost useless for me. The tendency is same for many, many websites.

Poor Layout

[COMON$]

I think poor layout is more of the problem than loading times. In the late 90s and up to 2003 or so, websites were aweful from an artistic standpoint, but many sites have gotten better.

But for me the ability to sort through goods is the #1 priority. Yes I like to have a pretty site to look at but if I cannot find what I am looking for with a few simple queries then I am gone. Newegg is a fine example of a site where I can find what I want quickly. Tigerdirect is getting better. Dell is the worst. I have a theory that Dell is like many supermarkets, they rearrange stuff and make searching difficult so you see the maximum number of items before finding what you are actually looking for.

Web designers, if you want business, make it easy. I dont really think most people go to sites just to browse. Most of the time we are there with a purpose and as an ADD generation we want it quickly or we will move on.

Re:tabs

[From A Far Away Land]

There ought to be a lot more consideration given to dialup users this study finds. Bling might draw people back to the site, but only if it takes a second to load.

Flash? No thanks.

[Channard]

I'm on dial-up so I expect some long load times. However, if I get a flash webpage, I close it - I'm not messing about waiting an age for it to load. I'm not looking for some crappy 'multimedia experience' - I just want information, to buy something or whatever. I'm getting Broadband soon and I'll still be closing anything flash sites, no matter how fast they load. It's the web equivalent of powerpoint poisoning, and the worst thing is virtually every flash page I've seen hasn't been skippable.

Re:tabs

[Ash Vince]

The thing to remember is that most of the rest of the world have better internet connections than the US do now so pages load quicker for us.

Here in the UK slashdot is near instantaneous over 24 Megabit ADSL. 2 Megabit ADSL accounts are given away for free in the UK now with most phone connections. The slowest account people actually pay money for is 8 Megabit ADSL.

As for all the people saying they still use dialup, why? Here you can get better net connections than 56kbit using a mobile phone (3G - UMTS).

To me the idea of waiting 4 seconds for a page to load is monsterous, expecially if the next page I clicked took just as long even though half the images were already cached.

Re:AJAX completely lacks performance.

[Bogtha]

AJAX suffers from some severe performance problems.

This is a nonsensical thing to say. It all depends on what you are doing. Ajax can significantly increase performance too. Remember when GMail was first launched? The #1 thing everybody said was that it was fast. Why? Because it used Ajax.

We looked into using several AJAX-based Web forum systems, from several different vendors. After trying them all, those of us who were working on the project were quite disappointed. The performance of the AJAX-based products was absolutely terrible.

Without mentioning what those systems were using Ajax for, there is zero useful information there. It's certainly possible that Ajax decreased performance in these cases, there's plenty of people throwing Ajax at things where it just isn't useful just because it's the buzzword du jour. On the other hand, there's also plenty of people using it as just another tool, and getting decent performance and usability improvements out of it.

In short: "Ajax completely lacks performance" == stupid. "Ajax harms performance when used to do [x], [y] or [z]" == useful information.

No. It's registration

[gelfling]

Registration causes me to abandon online store sites. I have a credit card. We've been working out the bugs for 50 years. Credit card sales work pretty well already. I am not going to waste a lot of time registering for your damn website in order to qualify to spend my money with you. Sorry. If you really really really really really really want me to do your market research for you I demand a discount - maybe free shipping, which is my other pet peeve. It really doesn't cost $15 bucks to pick, pull and pack that widget. I'll trade a few seconds of load up time for that. Now get to work assholes. I'm the customer, not you.

Not developers

[Angst Badger]

Will this study finally show developers of shopping websites the importance of the performance of their websites?

Developers already know this. But at the end of the day, we're paid to implement the ill-considered plans of marketers and designers.

Re:tabs

[wgaryhas]

I guess you have never wanted to have the descriptions of several items up and compare them? In my experience, it is only linear when you are ready to pay; searching and comparing products benefits greatly from tabs.