Why loadtime is important

What is load time and why you should pay attention

Load time can be loosely defined as the amount of time between when a user requests to go to your site and when they actually see the content.

Slow sites drive visitors away. It's that simple. 26% of online users rate slow load times as the most frustrating factor in using the web. $4.35 billion in e-commerce sales have been lost each year due to user frustration related to slow downloads. In fact 48% of users report that they gave up trying to purchase an item online because the web pages took too long to load. Generally 8 seconds is the maximum amount of time that a web user will wait for a page to load. Consistently websites with load times above this had higher bailout rates than those with faster load times.

Know your audience

There are billions of internet users out there. Some have slow connections and some have very fast connections. So how do you know which one you are targetting? Look at your site, do you target younger families, or sell technology products? If so, chances are your target audience has high speed connections. On the other hand if you sell prescription drugs, or glasses your target audience is probably older and most likely has slower internet connections. For the technology site packing it with graphics and a cool design will probably not deter sales. But doing so on the prescription drug site may lead to many frustrated users who leave the site before it ever fully loads. Always pick a design that suits the lowest common denominator.