Slow Loading Pages – Are They Costing You Business?
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Slow Loading Pages – Are They Costing You Business?
This post first appeared on this site back in 2008 but it is still valid today.
Does your website load quickly? Many a potential customer will never reach your website because of slow loading pages. We have all experienced this. You do your Google search and you see what looks like a promising website. You then click onto that link and wait and wait some more. Then you simply give up and try another site. That business just lost money.
A slow loading website will drive potential visitors away long before your website ever opens. You have about two seconds to accomplish this. I call it the Google effect. Web surfers are so used to Google providing search results instantly. They then expect this quickness from all websites all the time.
The problem isn’t limited to small business websites that may have been home built. They actually often load very quickly because they don’t have many people visiting at the same time or they are not loaded with a lot of graphics. Retail e-commerce sites are notoriously slow loading for a variety of reasons. There are literally Billions of dollars lost annually due to slow loading pages. This problem may require a bit of website redesign to resolve or it may not.
A general rule of thumb is that you have about two seconds maybe three for your site to open. If it takes any longer your potential visitors leave quickly to try another option. The more web savvy your visitor the quicker they leave. Imagine if your website is slow loading for a cable connection, and then imagine how slow the process is for DSL, dial-up service, or for someone using a notebook and using a Wi-Fi connection.
Update: 04/25/2009 – When I wrote this story when I knew that I had very slow loading pages. My website developed at the time swore it was WordPress that was the problem. My current developer said the my web host, 1 and 1, that was the problem as they have really slow servers. I switched to Host Gator and the difference was amazing almost like a night and day difference.
The moral of this story is, don’t loose your visitor before they actually see your website.
Update 01/07/2010: Slow loading pages may eventually start to affect your websites ranking in the Google search results. In 2010 Google added page speed as part of it algorithm. It is a minor change but it is worth noting.
For Google it is a matter of saving money. Slow loading pages cost it hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
What say you?
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I hate slow loading pages, especially on my site. I have been using go daddy to host my site and I’ve had this issue for a few weeks now. I submitted an online help ticket and phoned in tech support. On the phone I was told I was bumped up in priority and my issue was streamlined through the system so that the problem could be dealt with quicker.
I was told I would be notified. Now, two weeks later, the problem continues and there has been no word. Ahh the frustration.
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I also hate slow loading websites due to heavy graphics etc. Whenever I encounter sites like this, I just close it right away. Webmasters should always ensure that their sites are working properly otherwise they will lose potential visitor…or worse, potential clients.
If I was looking for a certain topic and click on a website and it’s really slow to load what I do is just cancel it and choose another link instead. Slow loading websites are really irritating especially if you’re doing research and you have so little time.