Americans need instant gratification more than ever if you look at their online habits.
Google found that slowing search results by just 4/10ths of a second would reduce the number of searches by eight million a day and one in four people abandon a web page that takes more than four seconds to load.
This need for speed is not only affecting how we consume the web or buy online, but it's reaching into what we eat, how we date and even how long we can stand being in line.
To help us understand how Americans are becoming more inpatient both online and off, the folks at Online Graduate Programs put together the handy infographic below. I, for one, will start being more aware of how fast I click away after reading this.
Reader comments (2)
E-Business Consultant at Dan Barker
7:04AM on 27th June 2012
hi, Heather, thanks for posting this.
The "4 second" stat is not from Google, but actually from a 2009 Gomez Whitepaper. From the 'references' line in the image, it looks like Online Graduate Programs picked it up straight from a Kiss Metrics infographic. (ie. they didn't even bother to check the source properly & validate whether the data was worthwhile)
I'd love to see some more research into site speed & how it affects site performance. It always feels like there's more chatter, assumption, and people using stats for their own ends, than actual trustworthy site speed research.
dan
Senior SEO Account Manager at LBi
9:45AM on 27th June 2012
"50% of mobile users abandon a page if it takes longer than 10 seconds" - if there's ever a reason to keep on top of site speed in Webmaster Tools then this is it.
It would be interesting to see the extent an inflated bounce rate can have on rankings due to page load times on mobiles - my thinking being pages with high bounce rates are less likely to be seen as relevant by search engines, thus rank less favorably.
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