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?"

tabs

It takes a lot longer than 4 seconds for a Slashdot story to load, particularly with the new AJAXy discussion system. I usually open up several things at a time in different tabs, which decreases the average loading time since I can read one thing while another loads. What browser were these people using?

Re:tabs

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.

Re:tabs

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.

Re:tabs

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:tabs

As for all the people saying they still use dialup, why?

because internet service in my area is practically a monopoly. the phone company refuses to run DSL-capable line the 3000 ft from the highway into the village and install the nessesary hardware. they're making buckets of cash off of raping us for our dial up ($60 a month for 180 hours/month of net time, plus the "unlimited long distance" required to be able to get that 180/month plan), not to mention the overage charges they pull if you go over the 180/month, wheras you can get the cheapie 1.5mbps DSL for $15/month in town.

the only other options in the area are wireless high speed (similar to Wi-max), but for that you need to buy the antenna and gear upfront ($250) and satalite internet, with is not an option as a. our satalite provider doesn't do internet and b. it would be useless in any case due to the lag from satalite (stupid laws of physics).

Re:tabs

It takes a lot longer than 4 seconds for a Slashdot story to load, particularly with the new AJAXy discussion system.

Slashdot does not use AJAX, just some Javascript, for the new discussion system. In essence, the only thing it does is hide all posts until you click on its header to expand it. The posts are there anyway, loaded along with the rest of the page. That way, it uses about the bandwith of the nested option, while presenting it as a dynamic threaded view. If they used AJAX, it would (probably) send an asynchronous query to the Slashdot servers asking for precisely the post you try to open. That does not happen, I checked tcpdump myself.

Had they really used AJAX, a comment thread might have been a lot quicker to load initially, but slightly slower loading each post.

Re:AJAX completely lacks performance.

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.

Re:AJAX completely lacks performance.

It's pretty easy:

If you're application uses a lot of repeated screens and is really only a data-view and entry application, you should go AJAX. Because the slightly longer initial load time (to load ALL the interfacey stuff) is better than having to rerender the interface over HTML every time you change views.

If it's a step by step wizard type thing, or informational (think wikipedia) just get on with it using syncronous web pages.

Where AJAX fails is in the hands of inexperienced developers, where they won't allow the app to load almost everything before running. This is not always possible--something like google maps is a good example of this. You are going to have to load the maps as you go because there's too much data. However, google maps really relies on Images as data which is not the most efficient. They need to expand their client to render the maps itself from GIS info (obviously the satellite overlay will need to come from images).

Also, it fails when there is a high latency connection. However, a lot can be learned from past interfaces: feedback! Flash a div on the screen letting the user know it's loading, apply visibility:hidden when it's done. As long as the user knows that it's actually DOING SOMETHING and not just sitting there, they will give it the benefit of the doubt and wait. Test the connection latency at startup and then let the user know what you know. If you tell them in advance that they might experience poor performance because of their current connection, they are more likely to tolerate it.

Good interface design is a lot more than having it be fast. You have to keep the user informed of the current situation. It's not slowness that annoys people so much as not knowing what's going on. Early X windows had that problem for me also. Whereas in Windows when you click something the window immediately is created by GDI while the actual application loads, in X the appliation is started somewhere and then IT creates it's own window. So when you click on an Icon, it takes a few seconds of nothing (it seems) while we wait for the kernel to find on FS, allocate memory for and run the executable which does it's own init and then FINALLY pops up it's window. If you're running over a network connection, there's no disk noise to let you know anything is happening, so you are basically just sitting there wondering if you should click again. I don't know if it's still like this.

Anyway, my point is that there are a lot of tricks you can use to prevent user annoyance because it goes a lot further than some arbitrary time length.

Well..

Four-seconds-is-the-most-time-I-would-ever-spend-r eading-a-Slashdot-article-or-comment-so-I-ask-all- posters-to-please-make-their-points-quickly-and-su ccinctly-in-small-manageable-doses-ooh-look-there- is-a-shiny-object-on-my-desk-gotta-go.

Who is conducting that study?

Note that Akamai has a vested interest in this study. They would like to encourage more businesses to use their technology so that their sites load faster.

I am not saying that the study is biased, but one should at least consider that it is in Akamai's best interest to convince every site owner that they will lose customers if their site is not fast enough.

Re:Who is conducting that study?

4s seems remarkably high!

I get frustrated by a delay of even 1s.

Re:Who is conducting that study?

That's nothing, I couldn't even read your whole post since it was too long.

Great

Now that this research is in, I predict that all website designers will realize the futility of flashy designs and instead remake their sites to be more like Craigslist or Google. I'm predicting an end to Flash and Javascript.[/naivete]

Bullshit

I'm still on dialup, you insensitive clod! (really)

Only four seconds?

Sounds to me like people are getting really impatient these days. I'm willing to wait up to 10 seconds to let a page load, and if it still hasn't, but is busy (instead of connecting again) I load another tab and occupy myself with something else.

However, four seconds sounds accurate for how long to wait until the page -starts- to load. If I have to wait longer than 4 seconds just to connect to a web server, I start to get impatient. If it takes much longer, I'll come back to it later and go do something else.

I call bullshit

If the hyper-caffeinated, sugar-popping, MTV-watching, blipvert-desensitized ADD kids of today can tolerate the glacially loading site known as MySpace, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the slightly older, credit card-holding demographic of online shoppers gladly tolerate more than 4 seconds on we sites, and do so without much prejudice.

Either the summary is totally off, or this 'research' is total bunk.

Re:I call bullshit

I'd bet dollars to donuts that the slightly older, credit card-holding demographic of online shoppers gladly tolerate more than 4 seconds on we sites, and do so without much prejudice

I think it all comes down to what the site is doing, and how readily available another, virtually identical site (or range of merchandise, at similar prices, etc) actually is. The more sites there are that present and transact the same things in essentially the same way, the more that things like raw speed differentiate one from another. The more unique something is (niche merchandise, a blog with a particular perspective), the more patience people will have. Those things are nearly impossible to quantify, and thus you get largely BS, context-less reports like the one being discussed. I think that the larger conclusion ("people are less patient than they used to be") is valid - but pretty hard to nail down, in terms of specific seconds, for specific demographics, on particular platforms, across particular pipes, under certain seasonal circumstances, blah blah blah.

This survey was sponsored by...

How convenient for Akamai. A survey done by them shows that webpages need to load faster or you could lose money. And you wouldn't want that, now would you?

About Akamai
Akamai® is the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online. Thousands of organizations have formed trusted relationships with Akamai (...)

Disturbing...

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

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.

It can't be that simple.

I just can't imagine that someone who is used to using, say, Amazon.com, is going to blink, much less suddenly switch to another vendor, if they have a 15 or 20 second page load every once in a while. Now, sure, if they did it all the time, I'd start to wonder. But since a site like Amazon trades on the fact that it's a central clearing point for a vast selection of inventory, there's a built-in barrier to trying someone else based on the assumption that they are less likely to have it. There may also be barriers to switching based on unfamiliarity with alternate vendors, etc., but previous experience, if not outright customer loyalty and perception of being able to deliver the goods, really drive retention a lot more than how fast you can always get that page up.

Now, whether Akamai is being disingenuous or something else... I really couldn't imagine :)

Flash? No thanks.

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.

FlashBlock

This is one tool I really find useful for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/433/ [mozilla.org]

If you can't stand flash, then its for you.

Why I leave..

Wow, a web caching company has determined that customers abandon a site that is slow.

That is not an issue for me. My highest chance of leaving is determined by when in the buying process, the site provides total price including all shipping, handling, taxes, and acceptance of coupons codes. If they need my name and address I may leave depending on if they have a shipping link or general shipping info somewhere on the site that I can reference first. I will ALWAYS leave if they require CC or payment information before providing the total price or even a hint of shipping costs.
I guess they need my address prior to calculating shipping and handling charges if they do not have flat rates but a place to enter my just my zip code should be enough IMHO.

For a good example of providing a good experience is NewEgg. They includes the shipping costs right next to the product descriptions without even having to go to a cart first.

I view the delay or confusion of shipping and handling charges to be an attempt to hide a total cost or get you to get so far that they figure you will not back out. I will back out and take my business elesewhere.
Almost like the the Ebay sellers that charge $20 to ship a motherboard (at least they are up front about it though).

I must be part of that statistic

I'm here waiting for the thread to load up, click reply and decide to wri.. oooh, shiny thing!

Speaking of which....

Stats for http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] -

Request Count: 78
Bytes Sent: 50.871
Bytes Received: 436.121

RESPONSE CODES
--------------
HTTP/200: 78

RESPONSE BYTES (by Content-Type)
--------------
          application/x-javascript: 288.162
application/x-shockwave-flash: 22.517
                                        text/html: 17.348
                                        image/png: 11.410
                                          ~headers: 21.942
                                          text/css: 37.599
                            text/javascript: 9.026
                                        image/gif: 28.117

That certainly takes longer than 4 seconds.

No. It's registration

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

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.

Depends entirely on what...

If I go to the front page of an online newspaper or similar site, I expect it to take long to load. If I click an article link, my patience is very thin because my target is simple article text, possibly with an illustration. Same with an online store. Also, there's a few tricks that lets the browser render it before it's loaded all the items - for example setting an image's height and width attributes. Not everyone has learned that yet. Also it depends on how much meaningful content there's on a page. If I have to visit a [break] new [break] page [break] for [break] every [break] sentence, I'm a lot less patient than if you just load it in one big honking page that I can scroll.

In short, measuring cost (time) without measuring benefit (content) is meaningless. If google's search page took four seconds to load, they'd be a dead duck. Other pages couldn't be rendered in four seconds with a Core 2 Quad and GigE, but are still highly successful. The pages you want to check is where the user asked you for something specific, in which case you'd better deliver ASAP without crapping up the page with everything he didn't ask for. Pages that are slow, I can live with. Pages that are slow, deliver little and waste time on meaningless stuff I don't.

Notice who sponsors the study

Not to argue that nothing on the web should take more than 4 seconds to load (on _second_ load), but notice who sponsored the study - Akamai. It's like if Microsoft sponsored a study "proving" that Linux sucks.

Caching is your friend. If you cache, don't forget to version your stuff as well:

<script src="foo.js?d=md5sum-of-the-script"></script>

And do this with everything you cache - css, xml, xsl, whatever.