Don’t Be Late to the Loading Party

Site visitors aren’t very forgiving when it comes to website loading speed, for example. Once they arrive at a site, they expect to see it in its entirety — not to wait for it to load element by element. In fact, visitors will often abandon a “tardy” site for a different Web property altogether. – See more at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/don-t-be-late-to-the-loading-party.aspx#

In life, we all have acquaintances that pride themselves on being early for events. Although their promptness may be a bit irritating to, say, a party host, it is a far better alternative to the people who are always late.

In general, society takes timeliness very seriously: If you’re late to an interview, you probably won’t get the job offer; if you’re tardy to a school play, your daughter will never let you live it down; and if you don’t make it to the airport on time, you better be ready to shell out cash for a new ticket. Timeliness is equally important in the digital world.

Site visitors aren’t very forgiving when it comes to website loading speed, for example. Once they arrive at a site, they expect to see it in its entirety — not to wait for it to load element by element. In fact, visitors will often abandon a “tardy” site for a different Web property altogether. This can have a severe impact on a brand’s bottom line, as the Aberdeen Group found that a one-second delay in website performance results in a 7 percent loss in conversions, an 11 percent decrease in page views and a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction.

This article originally appeared in the March 2014 issue of Website Magazine. You can read the original version here.