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Faster than a speeding bullet ... well almost

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is reputedly the fastest production car in the world. It has a top speed of 253 miles per hour and can accelerate from 0 top 60 miles per hour in a little over three seconds. And if you're having some problems picturing just what three seconds ‘looks' like then think of it as the time it takes for a surfer to start getting bored while he or she is waiting for your web page to load.

Yep, in the time that it takes for a $US1.5 million 16 cylinder state of the art street car to hit 60 miles an hour your surfer is starting to get bored if your web page hasn't finished loading. At the four second mark he or she is not just bored ... they're gone and they're not coming back.

To make things even more interesting the vast majority of surfers aren't stopping to consider that it might be their connection that's running slow or that traffic on the Net is slowing everything down. Oh no, they don't stop to consider that the reason your page is loading slow may be completely out of your hands ... they just get bored and they're gone to spend their money at a site that doesn't keep them waiting.

And don't think that if you do achieve a four second loading time you're not going to lose your surfers because you will. You see, four seconds is the maximum time that people will wait these days for a website to load.

Now doesn't that just suck big time for all those people who think that slow-loading flash entry pages make their sites look so cool. Doesn't it just suck big time for all those idiots out there who like to think they're top web designers but the pages they design load at the speed of a dead snail?

And doesn't it just suck for you too because you are going to have to cut your designs to the bone if you want to produce a web page that loads in under four seconds. It can be done you know but it is going to take some real talent to design a page that not only looks attractive and professional (a survey at the beginning of the year found that people trust websites that look professional) but loads in under four seconds.

I look around at some of the commercial designers that we compete with occasionally and I doubt that they could meet the challenge of a four second page. I'm not sure we could either but then we might stand a better chance because, with a background in adult, we have always cut back on graphics to speed up loading time.

You may wonder if the slow-loading page problem is something that has reared its ugly head just recently but that is certainly not the case. A year ago research found that slow-loading pages were near the top of the list of things that annoyed surfers the most.

Back then it was about number five on the list of annoying web site characteristics and now it's moving up the charts with a bullet. Online shoppers rank slow pages as the second most annoying web site characteristic and the only thing that beats it is high prices.

While you're thinking of annoying characteristics you should also be aware that a high percentage of online shoppers insist on a rapid checkout process too. But then that's been obvious for quite some time. The more hoops a surfer has to jump through to make a purchase the more likely he or she is to abandon their shopping cart.

The last thing a would-be purchaser wants to do is fill in forms, provide personal details, and take surveys before they can reach the checkout and make their purchase.

Sadly all those things that I have just mentioned don't seem to sink in with many online merchants. Sure, they wonder why so many people start the process and fill their shopping carts with a couple of items but then don't complete the purchase.

You can show them all the data and surveys that prove why surfers don't complete their purchase but it just doesn't seem to sink in. At times you have to wonder why those surveys and forms are so much more important than making sales.

And you also have to wonder why all that cool decoration that slows the loading of web pages is so important too. Isn't the idea to attract your customers and get them into your site quickly?

Maybe I am mistaken but then there seem to be a hell of a lot of very unhappy online merchants around the place who aren't making the sales they thought they would make when they moved their business online.

But then we here in adult would never do anything like that ... would we?