Web Response Times

Think back to the days when you had to operate on a 56K modem and were forced to wait a while to properly operate a website as a picture slowly appeared in its entirety piece by piece. Frustrating, wasn’t it? Fast download times are important for users. No matter what it is that slows down response time, users will be turned off by the delay.

The two main reasons a website’s responsiveness speed matters is due to human limitations and human aspirations:

• It is not a rare phenomenon that our memory eludes us at times, especially short-term memory. Also, it is increasingly tougher to hold someone’s attention. These factors refer to our human limitations. A slow website download speed adversely affects our memory and attention span and “we simply don’t perform as well if we have to wait and suffer the inevitable decay of information stored in short-term memory.”
• As humans, we like to feel in control of our destiny and doings rather than under the control of another, especially a computer or machine. Once a computer or website delays its response time, we tend to feel like we are not in control or what we aim to accomplish. Also, from a consumer’s perspective, a company that makes patrons wait instead of providing responsive service comes across as either arrogant or incompetent, neither of which is a good perception to put out.

Considering this, it is important to realize that a quick and efficient user experience beats out a glamorous one. Increased speed and efficiency allows a user to engage more with a site by spending their time moving freely and focusing on content instead of waiting. A user’s experience with a site is much more important than all the slogans, advertising or widgets a site takes its sweet time loading.

Jakob Nielsen expands on the notion of website responsiveness by providing a simple breakdown of response-time limits and their respective effects on the user and his experience. He also provides an example from a recent eyetracking study he conducted. The study demonstrated the adverse effects of increased load time on the user’s viewing of the page and its intended promotional focus.

At the end of a user’s experience with a given site, what tends to leave a lasting impression on them is the response time they experienced while navigating the site. The longer a user has to wait to be served by the computer, the more annoyed they will get. It essentially reflects poor service, no matter how fancy of a page you deliver at the end of the load time. So it does not matter if it is simply a large image loading through a 56K modem or a bunch of fancy widgets loading with a high-speed cable modem, increased wait-time is an experience-killer.

In conclusion, to increase your user-friendliness and likeability on the web, get to the users quicker than the slow sites do.