Psychology of Web page opening speed

The best speed for Web pages to open

2 seconds!

Many studies have shown that users are most satisfied with the time it takes to open a webpage, under 2 seconds. The median of the longest wait time that the user can endure, between 6-8 seconds. This means that 8 seconds is a critical value, and if your site is open for more than 8 seconds, chances are that most visitors will eventually leave you.

Research shows that if the page is not loaded after waiting 12 seconds, more than 99% users will close the page and no longer wait.

However, if the site is able to display a feedback message to the user, such as a progress bar, while waiting to load, the user can tolerate a time that extends to 38 seconds.

The psychological impact on visitors

According to some sample surveys, visitors tend to think that opening a faster site is more quality, more credible, and more interesting.

Correspondingly, the more slowly the Web page opens, the stronger the visitor's psychological frustration will be, and the credibility and quality of the site can be questioned. In this case, the user will feel that there may be some errors in the background of the site, because for a long time, he did not get any hints. Moreover, the slow opening speed will let the user forget what to do next, have to re-recall, which will further worsen the user experience.

This indicator is especially important for e-commerce sites. The faster you load, the easier it will be for your visitors to become your customers, reducing the percentage of customers who choose their products and end up paying off the bill.

However, the site response speed is not too fast, otherwise users will increase the frequency of interaction with the server, which may increase the probability of errors.

Some empirical results

Google has done a trial, showing 10 results page loading takes 0.4 seconds, showing 30 search results page loading takes 0.9 seconds, resulting in a decrease in Google's total traffic and revenue by 20%.

Google Maps on-line when the home size of 100KB, and then dropped to 70~80kb. As a result, traffic rose by 10% in the first week, and the next 3 weeks Rose 25%.

Amazon's stats also show similar results, with every 100 milliseconds increase in home opening times and a 1% reduction in site sales.

The difference between broadband and narrowband

Studies have shown that broadband users are less patient than narrowband users. Broadband users are willing to endure the longest waiting time, often only 4-6 seconds.

Web site creators must remember that in the ADSL condition, 3-5 seconds can be loaded in the Web page, in narrow-band conditions need 20-30 seconds to open. As a result, the overall size of the Web page----including the size of the picture, JavaScript, and CSS files----not too large, which is beneficial for both broadband and narrowband users.

Nanyi (http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2009/03/the_psychology_of_web_performance.html)