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Online Tutorial - Speed
Speed
of your web site -- it is THE most important aspect
of your site hands down. Why? Regardless of your sizzling
ad copy, your stunning graphics and your world changing
products, the surfer may never see it. If your site
takes too long to load, the visitor will hit the BACK
button and they are gone -- for good. This is not fantasy,
this is fact.
Zona
Research (http://www.zonaresearch.com/)
has estimated that slow web site downloads can be responsible
for up to $4 billion dollars of e-Commerce lost revenue.
Ouch.
Web
Facts from Zona Research
- 44.1 million people in the US shop online
- 37.5
million people will become online shoppers in the
next 12 months
- Shoppers
with slow 14.4kb modems represent a loss in e-Commerce
sales of $73 million each month
- $58
million a month in e-Commerce sales is lost each
month due to Web page loading failures
- $3
million is at risk monthly in the securities trading
industry due to unacceptable download times
- More
than $2.8 million is at risk monthly in the online
travel and tourism industry due to unacceptable
download times.
Okay,
those are stunning facts, to say the least. And here
we are at the brink of the holiday shopping season and
many sites out there will lose sales due to slow loading
web sites.
So
how long should your site take to load to avoid costly
losses in revenue? According to Zona Research, 8 seconds!
We aren't talking about a full load here...just the
time it takes for your site to have readable text appear
on the screen. We highly suggest testing on a 28.8kps
connection -- since it is still the standard connection
for web shoppers out there.
When
it comes to determining "speed" on the web, we need
to be in agreement how a site's "speed" is measured.
You may have heard others state your page should be
40k or less...meaning the file size of your html file
and all the graphics which load should not exceed 40k.
This may seem like a good measuring stick, but what
if you host your site on GeoCities and I host mine with
Exodus. Obviously, your free site at GeoCities is not
placed on the same fast server that mine is at Exodus,
which I pay a premium for. So, since all servers are
not equal in speed on the Internet, having a "universal
page size method" is unrealistic.
In
this tutorial, we will use two actual websites to show
how a poor design and layout can affect your sales.
The site we will use is UMI
Publications.
So,
what can you do to increase the loading speed your site?
Continue:
Determine Your Site's Speed
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