Ahsaniqbalkmc 0 Report post Posted June 8, 2011 Lately, I have hear a lot about the value of fast loading time for a website. There are both direct and indirect benefits of making your web pages load faster. The direct benefits include increased pageviews per user, increased number of clicks per user, increased revenue from the same amount of traffic, decreased bounce rate and above all happy users. I would like to discuss them all one by one.Increased pageviews per user:On slow websites, users have to wait long before they can actually see the content they were looking for. In this busy life, no one likes waiting. So if your web pages have huge loading times, your users might wait to see the first page (landing page) of your website according to their needs, but they are very unlikely to click on any other page. As soon as they see the content they were looking for, they will disappear from your website. This means that the value of pageviews per user will be very low for your website. If you think, this is a huge draw back. No matter you serve ads or sell products. Every user is a potential customer and the longer a customer stays with you, the higher the chances of making money out of it. For advertisers serving CPC and CPM ads, the increased pageviews per user is very helpful. This can simply double or even triple the revenues generated with the same amount of traffic.Increased number of clicks per user:When users see that your website responds very quickly to their commands (clicks), they will be encouraged to click more and more. This will not only increase the page views per user, but also the chances of the user clicking on ads or buying a product. On slow websites, which take forever to load, the users are discouraged to click on everything they find interesting and this is a major drawback for the site owner.Increased revenues from same amount of traffic:As I discussed above, the increased pageviews per user and increased number of clicks per user will directly effect the revenues you generate from serving ads. This may simply double or even triple your earnings from exactly the same amount of traffic. In my opinion this is the easiest way to increase your earnings.Decreased bounce rate:Their are many rumors that bounce rate is a potential signal for determining the SERP. So decreasing the bounce rate (which is the reciprocal of increasing pageviews per user), is going to be very helpful in the longer run.Happy users:This is the most important effect of increasing page speed. Happy users will always talk about your product and believe me or not, word of mouth advertisement is still the best form of advertisement.So what is your website's page speed?Google has a wonderful tool that determines a page speed score for the pages of your website. When I first checked my homepage, I got a score of 83. It is a good score but the tool gave me few suggestions. I acted on them and streamlined my website accordingly. Now the page speed score of my website is 91.What is the score of your website's home page. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Xarex 1 Report post Posted June 8, 2011 (edited) I don't know how true it is, but Google released a report on a page that loaded slowly.. I think it was something about.. regular page load is about 4 seconds vs slow page load is anything after 10 seconds -- and it was enough that people actually left the page. It's crazy to think that even 10 years ago, when DSL was the connection and things were a bit faster -- although you still had to wait for things to load, we had the patience to actually wait for it.And then go back even further to 56k and you were actually waiting almost 5 minutes for an image to load. Images that load in seconds today.It is quite amazing how fast our Internet speed is becoming, specifically in America. I've been living in another country for the past year, and although not the slowest, certainly not up to American standards. We are basically spoiled in America. In the US, I was on a server at my university where I could download a movie in 10 minutes. I am now in another country where it takes about two hours to download a movie. And while I can remember when it took me anywhere from 3 or 4 days to a week to download a large file like that, it is certainly faster than what it was.As Internet has become fast, we expect things to be instant. That's just the way it is. If it takes longer, we presume it's broken, though it probably isn't.I've been doing all I can to speed up my pages.. using the htaccess gzip method and setting image expiry dates, and attempting to compress pages, so that they use the cache from the users' computer, and the visitor will only see the latest pages if they have been updated. There are a lot of things to do to speed up your own site.One of the hardest things that a webmaster must do: Be critical of your own website. It's hard -- a website you spent hours doing, making sure it works, gathering code, and finally adding content, and also making sure it's good content and updated content.But after all that, you must return to the frame of mind where you are not the webmaster, but just a visitor.I try and go on to my site using different browsers and different computers to see the load time. I like to think of myself as a visitor when I'm doing this. Do I have the patience to wait? What happens if I get that occasional error? Or the other error.. "MySQL server has gone away." Would I really be a visitor whose going to click the refresh button in hopes that it works? Or will I just close it out and go somewhere else? Creating a webpage and being a webmaster is not easy. I'm always checking out my bounce rate.. and for my blog, it was 38% with an average of 8-10 minutes on the site and about 6-10 page visits.I have since tried a few different ways of presenting my site.. and now it's ONLY videos. The bound rate is over 50% with an average of 5-6 minutes on the site and about 4-5 page visits.Is this higher bounce rate okay for my current site? I would think so. For my blog site -- people were reading content and then going to the videos that I linked within the content. Not only did you read the blog, but now you could look through the videos, head over to the forums for more discussion, check out the wallpaper section I had.*No longer using my blog site at the momentFor my video site -- there is no content to read. Only videos to go to. After your done viewing a video, you either view more videos, you comment, or you leave. That's all.So the bounce rate makes sense.I also wonder ... how much of a bounce rate does YouTube, Facebook, or other popular sites have? I mean.. and how can you even compare your own site to these sites? My site gets maybe 100 visitors a day, if I'm advertising my site. If I don't, I get about 50. So the accuracy of the bounce rate in comparison to my site.. probably shouldn't be compared.On my blog site, I was getting a ton of hits .. almost 1000 a day, but these weren't hits from Unique visitors. But Google Analytics said very different. I was only getting about 30-80 unique visits a day. So I'm not sure what the CMS was counting.Many count banner, clicks, visits themselves (so refreshing might count as a visit -- which is not a good way of doing it)I think Google Analytics does the best job to give you the most accurate details. And you can get a lot of details from it.So I've since set up a new Google Analytics tracking system for my video site .. and one of the most important features I like is the New vs. Returning. Very useful. I usually have around half. I just started it 2 days ago .. 66/33 new/return. It's not too bad for only 2 days. My hope is that people will understand what my site is about and keep coming back to view the videos or check it out.But as for errors and other things .. slow page loading.. I really try and put myself into my visitors' place -- and I get upset when I do come across an error and try to fix it as fast as possible. It's just like walking into a store or learning in a classroom -- you expect things to run smooth, be professional, and work. If they don't.. you question the credibility of everything.------As for my blog site.. my speed score was around 71/100. I was using the Google Chrome Speed Test addon.Interesting enough.. my results for the video site... 38/100. Though it looks like it loads fast.. think about 10-13 seconds. Edited June 8, 2011 by Xarex (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted June 8, 2011 71/100 or 81/100 means a way of measuring commitment to google critera.Which is not really what a real user wants.If a page on the web needs 4 seconds to load, I go out immediately. And faster than that if I see "waiting for ad_something".On the other hand, it's true that having a fast-loading webpage makes people happy to visit your website.However, most of webmasters today create "nice" pages, with a lot of graphical effets, which makes the page load slow.Several seconds for loading a nice picture is supposed to be a neglectible time.Several seconds waiting for the end of the image loading in order to read my text makes me angry.So, always, think about your visitors, do you think they are looking for nice things, or do they simply want a text info, with immediate access? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted June 8, 2011 so compromising between contents and speed... it's important to ensure that the information to be presented are available and limited unnecessary data (like advertisements and related information)you will also consider that there's a lot of mobile device users these days which still has their low level of speed connections, we're in the era of the mobile booming.. making a site (or page) elegant and simple takes a bit of compromising effort between contents and looks... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rohitwebmaster 0 Report post Posted October 9, 2011 hmmmm right, page speed does matter in every field from SEO to designing, i don't have adsense account so i'm using adbrite, and its very irritating when i found my blog too slow. look at here http://www.indyatech.com/ , plzz suggest me how to improve page loading speed. its hosted on free blogging platform blogger. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 9, 2011 hmmmm right, page speed does matter in every field from SEO to designing, i don't have adsense account so i'm using adbrite, and its very irritating when i found my blog too slow. look at here http://www.indyatech.com/ , plzz suggest me how to improve page loading speed. its hosted on free blogging platform blogger. pop-ups are annoying... you should change ad service... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
