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Long Page Load Times Lose Shoppers

You’d think with so many people using broadband now that page load times shouldn’t be an issue. Not so; according to many surveys of online shoppers that frequently mention respondent complaints of web sites loading too slowly.

The problem, as I’ve stated on numerous occasions in the past, doesn’t so much lie with consumers demanding whizz bang shopping experiences, but the tendency of marketers and developers seeming to take an approach of “hmm.. most people are on broadband now, lets use every ounce of that bandwidth”.

There’s a few points to bear in mind:

a) There are still healthy numbers of people on dialup connections and just because someone is on dialup doesn’t mean they don’t have cash to spend online.

b) Broadband comes in all different speeds - mainly from 256kbps a sec to 1500kbps. That’s a huge variation in capacity

c) Even if someone has a 1500kbps connection, or even just 256kbps, it doesn’t mean it’s running at that speed all the time. ISPs are notorious for slowdowns. Many people are not getting the speed they pay for.

d) While people may have been somewhat tolerant of waiting 30 seconds for a page to load a few years ago, they certainly aren’t now. Most people get a broadband connection for *speed*.

e) People multi-task - while your page is loading, they may also be watching streaming video, listening to streaming radio etc. which also takes up bandwidth.

It’s wonderful that broadband has allowed for marketers, developers and designers to let their imaginations run wild but the new breed perhaps doesn’t really understand we left narrowband behind for a reason - and it wasn’t just so we could watch movies on YouTube. People want to surf the web - fast.