How Fast is Fast Enough? | Instart Logic

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HOW FAST IS FAST ENOUGH?
BY KYLE GENTRY
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(No Transcript)
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• As a company focused on web performance, we get
  asked all the time "How fast should my site
  load?" One way we help answer this question with
  customers is by running tests to see where bounce
  rates start to increase and conversions decrease
  for their specific users. While helpful, these
  tests are time-consuming and quite difficult to
  administer properly.
• Thankfully, we recently read an article by Denys
  Mishunov at Smashing Magazine that looks at this
  question from a completely different perspective
  human psychology that is a nice rule of thumb
  when considering your site's load times. Within
  his analysis, he breaks down time into four
  categories
• Instant (0.1-0.2 seconds) is when there is no
  perceptible "lag" in response. For example, when
  clicking a button on a website, the button should
  depress instantly to mirror the pressing of a
  button in real life.
• Immediate (0.5-1s) is the time a user expects a
  reaction but not necessarily a response. A prime
  example would be the acknowledgement (a nod,
  perhaps) that you are hearing someone when they
  are talking to you.
• User Flow (2-5s) is the time when the person is
  most likely to experience "concentration,
  absolute absorption in an activity and deep
  enjoyment." Delivering information within this
  time frame gives it the best chance of being
  consumed.
• Attention Span (5-10s) is the time a user is
  increasingly likely to become distracted and
  disengaged.
• Now, of course we would all like websites to load
  instantly or immediately, but unfortunately,
  there are many variables that make such a goal
  unrealistic. However, if you look at the
  definitions, you can apply some rules to page
  load times that are achievable and can maximize
  the likelihood that you will get and maintain
  user attention

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1. START RENDER SHOULD BE IMMEDIATE
Start render, or the first time something is
displayed on the screen, should take place in
under one second. When users click on a link or
type in a URL, they expect an immediate visual
response that the page is loading. The longer a
user stares at a blank screen, the more likely
they are to bounce.
2. PAGES SHOULD LOAD IN UNDER 5 SECONDS
While it is still possible that a user will wait
longer than 5 seconds for a page to load, knowing
what we know about shrinking human attention
spans (apparently goldfish now have longer ones
than we do?) you are likely to start to lose
users each second over 5. But if user patience is
not static and continues to get worse, this begs
the question Should we "skate to where the puck
is going to be?" If so, where is the puck headed?
WE BELIEVE 3 SECONDS IS THE NEW 5 SECONDS
If we assume that social and other mobile mediums
will increasingly influence Internet traffic and
that those mediums tend to bring some of the
least patient users, we believe 3 seconds should
be the goal. That is why we have adopted a
mission of delivering all sites to all users in
under 3 seconds. We believe it is what users will
expect in the very near future.
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One additional piece of information in the
article that we found interesting had to do with
perceived performance improvements. Essentially,
performance improvements under 20 are not
perceptible to humans. Said differently, for your
users to notice performance improvements on your
site, you will need to reduce that load time by
20 . So if your site loads in 6s for a user,
you would need to reduce it to 4.8s or less for
that same user to notice the difference. This can
be helpful when selecting and prioritizing
performance optimizations. If a change, or series
of changes, isnt going to improve performance by
20 or more for all or a subset of users, it
might not be worth the effort. Coincidentally,
when we set up our Performance Guarantee, we made
it 20 faster or free. Turns out we were onto
something.
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