Website Load Time Does Matter!

Still living in the dial up Internet days? Do you actually wait for that sound which comes when dial up Internet connects? Do you become excited when your Internet speed pops to 30 Kbs per second from 22 Kbs per second? And you call yourself a webmasters? Darn!

Internet has come far in last few years and speed has jumped eons ahead of itself each year. People around the planet are now used to faster Internet connections, quick download speeds, and ‘always on’ unlimited Internet download packages. A new research report reflects that the expected time for a eCommerce website to load is 2 seconds? If you are late then you are out of the game! The research report says that 40 percent of users leave an eCommerce website if it takes more than 2 seconds to load. All they can do is stretch to 3 seconds at the max.

The research was conducted by Akamai which is considered to be the largest Content Delivery Network (CDN) on this planet. They had done a similar survey in the year 2006, and this was done to understand the changes that Internet has experienced since then. On average, the expected load time has become half of what it was in the year 2006.

As pointed above above 40 percent leave the eCommerce website if it takes more than 2 seconds and around 52 percent consider faster loading times as the reason behind their loyalty towards the website. Around 64 percent of shoppers prefer looking into other websites if their last visited website performed ’slow’ (which means 3 plus seconds of load time). Though the research report focused on eCommerce websites, webmasters must understand that such research applies to other styles of websites, too.

Another important reason to encourage webmasters to develop quicker loading sites is because a faster loading website might well be ranked higher in search engine result pages. Now do you understand why you are not able to top those results even when you have been trying for so long? Website performance is a lot more important than you might actually think it can be. Webmasters who consider site loading times as an import SEO factor will always stay ahead in the race and Akamai’s report is indicating the same.

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