Web Page Load Times Are Crucial to Website Success

A typical online shopper will wait only two seconds, before getting frustrated.
And in a short three seconds, 40 percent shoppers will abandon the shopping site completely, according to a study conducted by Forrester Research Inc. for Akamai Technologies Inc.

The study comes as retailers head into the critical holiday shopping season relying more heavily than ever on their Web sites to spark sales.

Slow Page Load Times Cost Sales

Viewers have become noticeably less patient since the 2006 study, which found that the majority of online shoppers could wait four seconds for a shopping site to load before becoming annoyed.  The study revealed that the longer it takes for a Web page to load, the more likely a shopper will get distracted: 39 percent will begin another task on their computer, 23 percent will walk away from their computer and 14 percent will begin shopping at another site.

Whether your website is a retail sales or non-retail information site, a faster loading website makes of a better viewer experience.  And one of the success factors in a website is a positive viewer experience.

Slow Page Load Times May Affect Search Engine Ranking

There are three reasons to believe that slower load times may impact search engine rankings in the very near future:

• Google has left open the possibility that page load times could be a ranking factor in the future.
• Google recently released Page Speed, an add-on for Firefox browsers which can diagnose a number of elements which impact page load times.
• Last year, Google introduced Page Load Time as a ranking element in Google AdWords ads.

So, the folks at Google are thinking that slower load times may affect rankings.  And it makes sense, if you think about the fact that as web page load times increases; the level of organic traffic goes down.