Identifying whether or not load time is a factor in your website homepage bounce rate
Your website should load in under three seconds. People expect information these days to load instantaneously and require no-effort to consume. Two phenomena contribute to the users expectation of download time:
- Broadband has dramatically shortened download time and
- People are no longer going to the web just to be entertained, they are looking for information.
If they can’t get a lead on what they are looking for they will Google their way right off your site and onto another.
The Pingdom Tool will test your full website page by loading the complete HTML page, including objects such as images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes. The tool then acts as a web browser would and loads the page.
The load time of all the objects tested will then be shown visually with time bars. Each test will give you valuable information including statistics on the total load time of the page, the total number of objects tested and the size of the site including all of the objects.
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Online publishers should be concerned if their websites are slow to load. Users are paying larger Internet bills to have websites pop open, not gradually load. If your site’s load time is sluggish, users will surely take their business to a faster competitor.
Call us spoiled or impatient, but the fact is that the Web-using public doesn’t want to wait at all. If your landing page loads at anything slower than the speed of instant gratification, you run a serious risk of losing your customer.
As webpages grow in complexity, page load time can take longer and longer. This can translate into a loss of readers, page views, advertising impressions, click-throughs and ultimately, a loss of revenue. Want to learn more? Try our 13 tricks for speeding up your website.
