Feb. 5, 2009 - Google Says .5 Seconds Will Disengage Your Visitor and Buh-Bye
Everyone knows that web design is very important and that engaging the consumer is even more important still. Web 2.0 taught us that Flash and flashiness are dead and people just want to cut to the chase. Example? Just go to google.com. I actually designed my site subconsciously and then went to use Google and realized what I had done. Simple is more right?
Well apparently Google has put some science to this and come up with some numbers. If a page takes .5 seconds longer to load the consumer is gone! You can read this article here for some more information.
What can you do about it?
Well I am no web designer but I can show you a few tricks and this goes for blogs too!
- Get rid of those dang widgets that are slowing your page loads. If it takes 1 second let alone 10 seconds to load a page for someone who barely cares to read beyond the snippet you provided, you lost them! Too late! No do-overs. Also get rid of the background photo or make sure that’s optimized too!
- Every web optimization site always stresses images and video can increase loading times. Why do you think they are always stressing this? They aren’t stupid and it’s not just important, it’s EVERYTHING! So check the sizes of your images. Here is a good article on what to do.
- Decrease the size of your home page.html. The file size is everything. How big is yours? Check! Google your website like this and you can see the size. Mine is too big! You might have to hire someone to do this but it can be easy if you just get rid of all the fluff! People just want to search for houses…so let them!
If you don’t believe that .5 seconds is a lot of time think about this for a moment, pretend I am the consumer and I perform a search. (This is my exact behavior) I quickly scan the results reading the snippets. I start from top to bottom because the top is supposed to be the most relevant. I make a few quick clicks. If the first result takes over a few seconds to start loading and unless they seemed extremely relevant to what I searched for, I am gone! Poof!...On to the next result. You don’t think this happens? Check your bounce rate using Google Analytics. If you see a high number there your page probably stinks in any number of ways.
Simple is more!
Make sure to check out my Eau Claire Real Estate Agent website!
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