Now that Google takes site speed in to to account in search rankings, as announced today and reported across the blogosphere, it has become even more important to have a well performing and optimized website.
Of course they are going to continue weighing the relevance of a page higher than site performance, but how fast or slow a site loads and responds has become a ranking factor.
Usability experts have often written about how website performance affects user satisfaction and overall opinion of the website and in many respects the business or organization who is represented by the website.
One of the quickest ways to get your site performance measurement right from the horses mouth is to leverage the Google Webmaster Tools tool-set to see how your site is performing. Below are screenshots and basic instructions on how to do this. read more
Using HubSpot’sWebsite Grader can help you measure your website’s performance from a Internet marketing perspective. View this screencast video we created to learn more.
As Internet connectivity continues to become more readily available, lower priced, and more accessible, think wireless and mobile device, Internet users expectations have grown.
Internet users expect web pages to load twice as fast in 2009 as they did in 2006. User expectations have changed significantly in just three years.
Here are some of the findings from the study:
47% expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
52% of online shoppers claim that quick page loads are important for their loyalty to a site.
14% will start shopping at a different site if page loads are slow, 23% will stop shopping or even walk away from their computer.
64% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with their site visit will go somewhere else to shop next time.
Although this study focused on ecommerce sites, the findings should be relevant to any site owner regardless of the type of site since the results clearly show how big an effect slow load times can have on user behavior.
In the old study from 2006, people got restless if an ecommerce site took more than four seconds to load. In the 2009 study, people got restless if an ecommerce site took more than two seconds to load
More Insight
This is useful information and leaves room to ponder best practice ways and perhaps even innovative ways to architect higher performing web sites and apps. Sometimes it can be as simple as tweaking the performance of a server, leveraging the power and scalability of cloud computing, or even as complex as modifying the back end code of a web application to respond better. Either way, the benefit of meeting the demands, which can often equate to needs, is an important part of an organizations perception by customer, client and competitors.
We are an Internet marketing and social media marketing company that helps businesses get found on the Internet, initiate more leads and convert a higher amount of those leads into customers.
As Internet connectivity continues to become more readily available, lower priced, and more accessible, think wireless and mobile device, Internet users expectations have grown.
