Load’em Fast or Lose’em

I recently Stumbled upon a very good article from Roger Dooley about the research proving that fast loading pages matter online. In this ADD world of the Internet, we have too many interesting places to go than to sit and wait for a page to load. Roger points out that Google has factored download time into it’s relevancy score – and so they should. If I search Google and they “tell me this page has what I want”, I would be upset at them if it took too long to download. After all – I cannot be upset at the real culprit because I don’t stick around long enough to even catch their name.

The Internet may be the ultimate in “Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.” If you do have to ask me to wait, give me something else to do/read and ask my permission. It might not hurt to tell me why it is worth waiting for.

But at the end of the day, if you just give IT instructions to build a website – none of this will matter. Your website may indeed be your single most important marketing piece. Make it count. Let marketing build it.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5, March 2010

---

View All