How the brain reacts to a slow corporate websiteA presentation from KW Digital

Websites get heavier and heavier

kB

Larger pictures

More videos

Heavier scripts

1

2

3

Average bytes used per page, divided by type

Images

Scripts

Stylesheets

Flash

HTML

Other

Heavy pages are slowpages

People don’t like slow57% leave a slow site after waiting 3 seconds

78% have experienced stressor anger with a slow site50% feel that websites areslower now than five years ago

have thrown their mobile phones away

in anger after experiencing a slow

website

Some people really don’t like slow4%

We want you to be able to flick from one page to another as quickly as you can flick a page on a book. So we’re really aiming very, very high here… at something like 100 milliseconds.

– Urs Hölzle, Senior VP Operations, Google

The average web page loads in 4.9 sec

That’s 4,900 times longer than Google’s goal

?

But Why are we so impatient

Short time memory

A Jakob Nielsen study from 2010 shows that negative reactions on slow websites are connectedto our

How your brain perceives page load times

10 secKeeps your

attention… Barely

2 4 6 8 10 12 13 140

0.1 secFeels

instantaneous

+10 secLoses you

1 secLets you

think seamlessly

Based on a diagram from Strangeloop (http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/ThisIsYourBrainonaSlowWebsite_50abe136dc836_w1500.jpg)

And all these distractions sure don’t help

It’s not rocket science. It’s biology!

How the memory works – simplified crash courseSensor memory: Visual memory. Deleted every 100 milli secondShort term memory: Stores information for 10-15 seconds, then it’s goneWorking memory: Your brain’s Post-it notes and you only have a limited amount(Long-term memory: Not relevant in this case)

When visiting a website, we use different parts of our memory your goal as a webmaster is toReduce the use of working memory.Appeal to the sensor memory.

So keep it simple and fast

Less use of brain capacity to figure out the interface and getting upset over slow websites, allows your visitor to actually focus on your website. Not get distracted.

Be creative and makebeautiful websites

But not at the expense ofwebsite speed

Because that’s also at theexpense of your visitors

In a nutshell

Contact us if you want to know more about speeding up your website.

Or read these 5 tips from our expert Wezz Balk:

Or read this

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