Resources > Load Times
This gives information about the time needed to load web pages:
Why Load Pages Fast?
People will bail out from a site if pages load too slowly. eMarketer reports (Nov. 1998) how long people will wait before they give up on a site:
| Users Waiting | Load Time |
|---|---|
| 84% | 10 sec |
| 51% | 15 sec |
| 26% | 20 sec |
| 5% | 30 sec |
Zona Research reported (Apr 1999) that the bail out rate jumped after 7-8 seconds. The major factor cited for long load times: "excessive graphics on websites".
Do you make your pages load fast? TurboSanta reports (Dec. 1999) that the average home page load time among the Web’s top 120 retailers was about five seconds: can your site compete with this?
More on this issue: Jupiter Media Metrix says (Sep 2001) that 40% of surfers in the US visit websites more often if the pages load faster.
Enterpulse reported that US business professionals consider these important factors in a great website (2002):
| Users | Factors |
|---|---|
| 96% | Updated frequently |
| 96% | Ease of use |
| 93% | High-quality content |
| 90% | Respond to questions within 24 hours |
| 89% | Quick to download |
Connection Speeds
Connection speeds depend very much on the target audience. For example, high-speed broadband connections are more common in some countries than in others, usually more common in workplaces than in homes, and more common in wealthy households than in poor. As always, when designing a site, you must know your target audience.
As this site’s primary audience is North American website designers, the data presented here pertain primarily to the USA and Canada.
Do you know the connection speeds of your visitors? Nielsen/ NetRatings reported (Feb. 2006) that 32% of US home users have dial-up connections, and 68% have broadband. For Canada these numbers are about 20% and 80%.
Caution : broadband does not necessarily mean high speed. Connections vary greatly in speed, and there are no good stats on how many broadband users are connected at which speeds. E.g. in my area these residential broadband speeds are available: 10M, 5M, 4M, 3M, 1M, 640K, 128K, and 64K baud; the slower speeds are budget options. This means that more people than one might expect have slower connections.
Caution : designers, who tend to have faster connections, must be sensitive to the fact that many users — even broadband users — have slower connections.
Page Sizes vs Visitors Lost
How big can you make your pages? It is possible to graph how many with modems will wait for a page to load for various sizes of pages. E.g., if a page is 60K in size — including text, graphics, audio, etc. — about 70% of typical home users with modems will wait for the page to load: the other 30% will give up and go elsewhere.
Caution : this graph is valid only for typical US and Canadian home users with good-quality modem connections in Feb. 2003: your mileage will vary.
Note : this does not cover users with broadband connections because the percentages of these users are changing rapidly and because there are no data on how many have which speeds.
Note : because a browser downloads files in packets, small images load much faster if they just fit into an integral number of packets; e.g. a 1.1K image may load twice as fast as a 1.3K image if the former fits into one packet, but the latter into two; small reductions in file sizes may therefore result in large decreases in load times. Predicting decreases is complex, since several packet sizes are used on the Internet, and since each packet includes overhead which reduces the amount of useful data it can hold: one rule of thumb is to assume a packet size of 1160 bytes.