![]() Performance is such a strong signal to Google that website performance is considered part of a website’s search ranking. Search users are more likely to bounce off a slow search result than a fast one. Google wants search results to be as relevant and useful as possible–slow sites are not very usable. Performance is Important Why Does Google Care About My Performance? Google can see this in search behavior–people are less likely to stay on slow sites. Less likely to buy that thing, click on your link, or subscribe to your service. Slow web pages frustrate users and make them less likely to stick around. Lots of eCommerce sites, marketing sites, and software services have shown a correlation between performance improvements and the success of their website. But you’ll wait for it, because it’s important. ![]() GMail is a big webapp, and sometimes it takes 6 seconds or longer to load. But if it’s not ready, you’ll probably lose interest and move on. When you click on that hot celebrity gossip link at TMZ, you’ll wait 4 or 5 seconds for it to load. ![]() When the user doesn’t understand how long they will wait, the wait time feels exaggerated. You may even decide to abandon and try something else. Wait? How long? As the seconds pass, you think that maybe the form failed and needs to be resubmitted. You submit a form and see a loading spinner with the text, “please wait”. You didn’t expect to have to wait here, and you start second-guessing if you really need that new graphic t-shirt. But as the seconds tick by, it feels wrong. So when you visit an online store and add a product to your cart, you have an expectation of how long it should take. You’ve probably bought lots of things on the internet, and you know how it works. Watching the loading spinners feels slow because of the importance of the result. Imagine waiting for a medical test result to load, or see the status of a mortgage application. When you are nervous about the content of a page or the results of a request, delays feel longer than they are. When you’re avoiding your work and scrolling through Twitter, if a link is slow to load, you lose interest real fast. It felt longer than it was because you were so bored. All there was to do was stare out the window. Back in the days before cellphones and handheld games. You’re sitting in the back seat on a long road trip. Slowness seems slower when you’re eager to get started with your work. When you open up a web application to begin your work, you don’t want to wait for it. You’re excited about an idea, or you’ve finally overcome procrastination to start. Simon Hearne shared that in the psychology work in “The Psychology of Waiting Lines”, David Maister defines 6 laws that people tend to follow when waiting in line, or waiting for a website: Psychology of Waiting 1. ![]() Users probably won’t wait 6 seconds for a click-bait story, but will wait 10 seconds or longer for Gmail to start. Each person can have a different expectation for how fast a website should be, based on what the user is doing and the kind of website. These user feelings are sometimes called Perceived Performance.įeelings are difficult to measure. A slow website causes frustration by slowing down the user doing their work. Web performance is about how fast your website feels to your users.
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