The average web site load time is a sluggish six seconds – infographic-gctid87616

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

The average web site load time is a sluggish six seconds – infographic by AG Staff in Social Media  - June 27, 2011    

 88  websites visited per day per user After studying 1 billion web pages  globally, New Relic has determined that it takes an average of six ...
 88 websites visited per day per user After studying 1 billion web pages globally, New Relic has determined that it takes an average of six seconds for a web page to load and success of a site is relative to its speed.
 Over a one week span, they studied actual page loads on sites,  testing various browsers, operating systems and even mobile and while  six seconds may not sound like a long time, New Relic CEO Lew Cirne  noted that "Nielsen data suggests that it takes only one second before a  user starts to notice a delay."
 That's code for users are A.D.D. and move on if they sense a delay.  The study found that it's not necessarily the servers or the network,  rather most of a user's load time is spent at the browser level as it  downloads JavaScript, interprets HTML, etc. This is a major reason web  site designers are trying to tell clients, especially  button-addicted-Realtors that having dozens of assets on your site that  consumers have to load, it slows the site down and it's not just a geeky  thing to want a speedy site, consumers are actually leaving when sites  are slow to load. That's just bad business if your storefront is a website.
   
         
^{Advertise at AG}

           Study results:
 Methodology According to New Relic, "Both our customers and we here at New Relic  have learned a lot from looking at the Real User Monitoring data that's  been coming in fast and furious over the last month. Based on the  javasrcipt library created by Google's Steve Souders, RUM shows what  performance issues actual users are experiencing on a site, right now."
 "How? Via New Relic's server-side agent, JavaScript is dynamically  inserted into pages as they are built. The injected JavaScript collects  timing information in the browser and contains details that identify the  specific app and web transaction processed on the backend as well as  how time was spent in the app for each request. When a page completes  loading in an end user's browser, the information is sent back to New  Relic asynchronously – so it doesn't effect page load time."

---------- Post added at 12:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:38 PM ----------

5 Steps for Faster Page Load Speed                                Posted on June 13, 2012 by Sam McRoberts              
                                                              As the speed of the average Internet connection  steadily improves, the acceptable load time for web pages continues to  drop. How fast a web page loads can have an impact on bounce rate, time  on site, conversion rates and even on search engine rankings. Generally,  the slower your site, the worse your metrics will be.
 According to Kiss Metrics,  a 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in  conversions. 7% is huge! To put that in perspective, an e-commerce site  making $100,000 per day would be losing $2.5 million dollars per year in  sales with just a 1 second delay. Ouch!
 In addition to the conversion issues there are also ranking issues  and trust/authority issues related to slow loading sites, and you don’t  want any of those!
 So what, you might ask, is considered acceptable at this point? 2  seconds, give or take a tad, is considered an acceptable page load  speed. At this point in time if your site isn’t loading in 2 seconds or  less, you’re losing visitors, conversions and rankings.
 In fact, according to Google Webmaster Tools a site is considered  “fast” when it has an average page load speed of 1.4 seconds or less,  and that is really fast.
 
 When calculating page load speed, there are actually two things to  consider: actual load time and perceived load time. Actual load time is  the total amount of time it takes for every object on the page to load  completely. Thankfully, that isn’t the page load time that matters most  to search engines and users. If it were, we’d all be in trouble!
 Perceived page load speed is what seems to matter most, which is the  amount of time it takes for all the visual and user facing elements of a  page to load (text, images, form elements, navigation, etc.) From what  we’ve seen Google Webmaster Tools is reporting on perceived page load  speed, and they seem to be getting that data from Google Toolbar users  so they know what the actual user experience is for your site.
 To see how your site is doing, you can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools here. You could also use a free tool like Pingdom  to test your page load speed, but data from Google WMT will be a more  accurate representation of your page load speed from a user perspective.
 Alas, in our experience very few web developers have any  understanding of page load speed factors, so most of the sites we see  have a perceived page load time in the 3-6 second range. 3 seconds is  tolerable, but 6 is pretty slow.
 So, without further ado, here are 5 of the most valuable tactics for  improving page load speed (all of these are pretty technical, and should  be done by a competent web developer):
 Step 1 – Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) A content delivery network involves a series of high-bandwidth  servers located in data centers spread all over the world. Essentially  you can load web objects of your choosing such as images, scripts,  videos, etc. onto these CDN servers, so that when a visitor comes to  your site these objects are loaded from a faster, more reliable server  in tandem with the objects loading from your own server.
 By placing such files on a CDN you significantly reduce your server  load, and these objects are loaded in parallel to those on your server,  thus significantly improving both actual and perceived page load speeds.  Because the files are distributed to data centers around the globe,  load speed can be fantastic regardless of where a visitor is coming  from.
 One of the best CDNs out there is Akamai,  though there are quite a few options available. If you want to improve  the page load speed of your site, this should be one of the first things  you look into.
 Step 2 – Reduce the Quantity of Objects Loading When a page loads, every single item on the page contributes to the  page load speed. A good rule of thumb is each object contributes an  average of 500-1000 milliseconds in perceived page load speed (though  this can vary drastically based on type and size of objects.) So, if you  have 70 objects loading, you’re probably looking at a 3.5-7 second  perceived page load speed.
 Every image, every JavaScript file, every CSS file, every ad call,  every analytics tracking file…the bigger the file, the longer it takes,  and they all add up! After a CDN, minimizing the number of files needed  should be your next step. A fast loading, well thought out site should  have no more than 15-20 objects loading on any given page.
 A few common tactics for doing this are to combine multiple CSS and  JavaScript files into one unified CSS file and one unified JavaScript  file. At the same time, you should also eliminate any unused or  unnecessary CSS and JavaScript from said files.
 Another common tactics is to combine images and to reduce the file  size of those images by changing file types and by removing unnecessary  color channels.
 You can also use CSS Sprites,  which combines background images into a single image that uses CSS  positioning to display the desired image segment in the right place. You  can significantly reduce the total number of images and the overall  file size this way, potentially saving quite a bit of load time.
 Step 3 – Set Expires Header as Far Out as Possible When a visitor comes to your site, the code on the page can tell the  browser how long to cache the various files from your site. While this  won’t help for first time visitors, it will drastically improve page  load speed on subsequent visits.
 There is a great article on Yahoo  that talks about the details, but you essentially want to set all  static elements to never expire, and variable elements should be set  with conditional requests.
 You should keep in mind how often your site changes when doing this,  and set the length accordingly. If you make visual and code changes to  your site once per year, set your expires header to 12 months. If you  make changes monthly, set it to 30 days. You get the idea.
 Step 4 – Gzip Compression It’s possible to use compression to reduce the file size of HTML, XML  and JSON file requests. This is a more complicated tactic, but it can  save on overall bandwidth united snakesge and thus on load time. It’s explained in  detail here, and all major browsers can handle this type of compression.
 Depending on the size of your files and the amount of unnecessary  space that can be compressed, this could result in significant load  speed benefits.
 Step 5 – Order Your Code for Users Browsers render websites based in the order of the code on the page.  If the visual and user facing elements (text, CSS, images) appear at the  top of the code, they will be rendered first, thus decreasing the  perceived page load speed. Though it may take some time for additional  elements to load, it will appear to site users that the page has fully  loaded (this tactic really works in conjunction with the other tips  we’ve covered.)
 To do this correctly, put any non-external scripts and non-visual  coding elements at the bottom of the code (except for asynchronous  Google Analytics script, which belongs in the  section.)
 At the same time, you can also “minify” your HTML, CSS and JavaScript  (reduce unnecessary spacing, comments, etc.), and work to reduce your  overall text-to-code ratio, which can have an SEO benefit.
 Overall your code should be clean, as simple as possible, and ordered  in such a way that visual elements come first and heavier or less  important elements come last.
 And that’s it! While there are dozens of other tactics (many are explored in the Yahoo article in Step 3), these 5 things will provide some quick wins for any page load speed problems you may be experiencing.
 As you implement these changes, keep an eye on your average page load  speed in Webmaster Tools (or wherever you’re tracking it), and  definitely track your conversion rate, bounce rate and average time on  site.
 Happy speeding!

---------- Post added at 12:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:40 PM ----------

5 Steps for Faster Page Load Speed                                Posted on June 13, 2012 by Sam McRoberts              
                                                              As the speed of the average Internet connection  steadily improves, the acceptable load time for web pages continues to  drop. How fast a web page loads can have an impact on bounce rate, time  on site, conversion rates and even on search engine rankings. Generally,  the slower your site, the worse your metrics will be.
 According to Kiss Metrics,  a 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in  conversions. 7% is huge! To put that in perspective, an e-commerce site  making $100,000 per day would be losing $2.5 million dollars per year in  sales with just a 1 second delay. Ouch!
 In addition to the conversion issues there are also ranking issues  and trust/authority issues related to slow loading sites, and you don't  want any of those!
 So what, you might ask, is considered acceptable at this point? 2  seconds, give or take a tad, is considered an acceptable page load  speed. At this point in time if your site isn't loading in 2 seconds or  less, you're losing visitors, conversions and rankings.
 In fact, according to Google Webmaster Tools a site is considered  "fast" when it has an average page load speed of 1.4 seconds or less,  and that is really fast.
 
 When calculating page load speed, there are actually two things to  consider: actual load time and perceived load time. Actual load time is  the total amount of time it takes for every object on the page to load  completely. Thankfully, that isn't the page load time that matters most  to search engines and users. If it were, we'd all be in trouble!
 Perceived page load speed is what seems to matter most, which is the  amount of time it takes for all the visual and user facing elements of a  page to load (text, images, form elements, navigation, etc.) From what  we've seen Google Webmaster Tools is reporting on perceived page load  speed, and they seem to be getting that data from Google Toolbar users  so they know what the actual user experience is for your site.
 To see how your site is doing, you can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools here. You could also use a free tool like Pingdom  to test your page load speed, but data from Google WMT will be a more  accurate representation of your page load speed from a user perspective.
 Alas, in our experience very few web developers have any  understanding of page load speed factors, so most of the sites we see  have a perceived page load time in the 3-6 second range. 3 seconds is  tolerable, but 6 is pretty slow.
 So, without further ado, here are 5 of the most valuable tactics for  improving page load speed (all of these are pretty technical, and should  be done by a competent web developer):
 Step 1 – Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) A content delivery network involves a series of high-bandwidth  servers located in data centers spread all over the world. Essentially  you can load web objects of your choosing such as images, scripts,  videos, etc. onto these CDN servers, so that when a visitor comes to  your site these objects are loaded from a faster, more reliable server  in tandem with the objects loading from your own server.
 By placing such files on a CDN you significantly reduce your server  load, and these objects are loaded in parallel to those on your server,  thus significantly improving both actual and perceived page load speeds.  Because the files are distributed to data centers around the globe,  load speed can be fantastic regardless of where a visitor is coming  from.
 One of the best CDNs out there is Akamai,  though there are quite a few options available. If you want to improve  the page load speed of your site, this should be one of the first things  you look into.
 Step 2 – Reduce the Quantity of Objects Loading When a page loads, every single item on the page contributes to the  page load speed. A good rule of thumb is each object contributes an  average of 500-1000 milliseconds in perceived page load speed (though  this can vary drastically based on type and size of objects.) So, if you  have 70 objects loading, you're probably looking at a 3.5-7 second  perceived page load speed.
 Every image, every JavaScript file, every CSS file, every ad call,  every analytics tracking file...the bigger the file, the longer it takes,  and they all add up! After a CDN, minimizing the number of files needed  should be your next step. A fast loading, well thought out site should  have no more than 15-20 objects loading on any given page.
 A few common tactics for doing this are to combine multiple CSS and  JavaScript files into one unified CSS file and one unified JavaScript  file. At the same time, you should also eliminate any unused or  unnecessary CSS and JavaScript from said files.
 Another common tactics is to combine images and to reduce the file  size of those images by changing file types and by removing unnecessary  color channels.
 You can also use CSS Sprites,  which combines background images into a single image that uses CSS  positioning to display the desired image segment in the right place. You  can significantly reduce the total number of images and the overall  file size this way, potentially saving quite a bit of load time.
 Step 3 – Set Expires Header as Far Out as Possible When a visitor comes to your site, the code on the page can tell the  browser how long to cache the various files from your site. While this  won't help for first time visitors, it will drastically improve page  load speed on subsequent visits.
 There is a great article on Yahoo  that talks about the details, but you essentially want to set all  static elements to never expire, and variable elements should be set  with conditional requests.
 You should keep in mind how often your site changes when doing this,  and set the length accordingly. If you make visual and code changes to  your site once per year, set your expires header to 12 months. If you  make changes monthly, set it to 30 days. You get the idea.
 Step 4 – Gzip Compression It's possible to use compression to reduce the file size of HTML, XML  and JSON file requests. This is a more complicated tactic, but it can  save on overall bandwidth united snakesge and thus on load time. It's explained in  detail here, and all major browsers can handle this type of compression.
 Depending on the size of your files and the amount of unnecessary  space that can be compressed, this could result in significant load  speed benefits.
 Step 5 – Order Your Code for Users Browsers render websites based in the order of the code on the page.  If the visual and user facing elements (text, CSS, images) appear at the  top of the code, they will be rendered first, thus decreasing the  perceived page load speed. Though it may take some time for additional  elements to load, it will appear to site users that the page has fully  loaded (this tactic really works in conjunction with the other tips  we've covered.)
 To do this correctly, put any non-external scripts and non-visual  coding elements at the bottom of the code (except for asynchronous  Google Analytics script, which belongs in the  section.)
 At the same time, you can also "minify" your HTML, CSS and JavaScript  (reduce unnecessary spacing, comments, etc.), and work to reduce your  overall text-to-code ratio, which can have an SEO benefit.
 Overall your code should be clean, as simple as possible, and ordered  in such a way that visual elements come first and heavier or less  important elements come last.
 And that's it! While there are dozens of other tactics (many are explored in the Yahoo article in Step 3), these 5 things will provide some quick wins for any page load speed problems you may be experiencing.
 As you implement these changes, keep an eye on your average page load  speed in Webmaster Tools (or wherever you're tracking it), and  definitely track your conversion rate, bounce rate and average time on  site.
 Happy speeding!