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It's a problem we have all experienced. It's surprising just how often it happens. We type in a www address in our internet browser (Internet Explorer, etc.) or click a link and wait for the webpage to appear on our screen. We wait... we wait longer... we wait even longer... we finally run out of patience and go to another website. Which website is going to get your business?
What happened? Why did the webpage take so long to appear and cause the first website to lose the sale?
Three common causes:
1. Slow website host - wherever the website is stored, the systems that serve it up to you are very slow. Remedy: ask your host how to speed it up or move to a new faster host. Preferably one that comes recommended.
2. The ISP (Internet Service Provider) - the delay is at the webpage viewers end. Remedy: they either need to upgrade their connection or move to a faster ISP. Ask friends and colleagues for a recommendation and see it working well before changing.
3. Design error! - The website's individual webpages are heavily weighed down with big files, typically image files, and it slows everything down to a crawl. Remedy: Hire someone to reduce those file sizes and optimise your webpages.
There is one other thing to consider too. If your computer is outdated or low specification it may be causing those delays too. If its more than say three years old or so it may be time to upgrade or replace it.
As you can see there are several systems working silently in the background to enable you to view webpages and websites. Any one of them can affect how quickly or slowly those pages appear on your screen. So, if you are the website provider, how long is an acceptable time for your potential customers to wait for a webpage to appear? Well, between 1 and 20 seconds really. The nearer 1 second you are the better. The nearer 20 seconds or over you are the more urgently you need to do something. You are probably already losing potential customers from that delay. They won't wait around, they'll be off to buy from another faster website.
Now, you may be thinking what does 20 seconds matter? In the internet world its a loooong time. Often when you go to a website you look at several pages within that site and you want to do it quickly and easily. Multiply that 10 or 20 second delay before the page appears by the number of pages youre going to view. Phew... that's a lot of waiting around and frustration in a world where seconds count.
The success of Google (www.google.com), an internet search tool, is in the news this week. Why are they so successful? Their searches are excellent and they've been able to cash in on the back of that. Time is an important function of those excellent searches. I just did a random search on Google and they returned a whopping 12,700,000 results in, wait for it, 0.32 seconds. Wow! They're very effective and very fast. Its so easy to use them to search the internet. If you had to wait twenty seconds or more for their searches would you bother? No, you'd go to another website thats much quicker.
Your website must work quickly and on a range of connection speeds - namely dial-up and broadband. You don't have to match the speed of Google but below 10 or ideally below 5 seconds would serve you well and give your business a significant advantage.
Its a pretty basic thing to get right but you must get it right. The conclusion of this article? Its simple. None of these problems are difficult to fix, in fact they are easy. Delays cause potential customers frustration and cost you sales and income. If you want your business to do well online do whatever is necessary to rectify the situation. And do it fast!
Good luck as always!
Peter Simmons is editor of the DYNAMIQ EZINE. GET MAXIMUM RESULTS FROM YOUR WEBSITE! Increase your traffic, sales, profits, referrals and more... START GETTING RESULTS RIGHT NOW with our FREE WEBSITE EVALUATION at http://www.dynamiq.co.uk/ezine or email me anytime for immediate assistance peter@dynamiq.co.uk
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