How quickly do you back-button away from a home page that's slow to load?
Asked by
ETpro (
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June 18th, 2012
I know I’m an impatient sort when surfing the Web. Unless I truly need to look at the information on a particular site, if it doesn’t load quickly, I am likely to back button out and try a different site or a different link in the SERPs. I’m sure I am not alone in this behavior. There has to be a curve for the page view loss per millisecond of load time. How many eyeballs does 5 seconds cost a Web developer?
I tried to search Google for actual research that shows the curve of page-view drop off per millisecond of load time for a given set of sites. I wasn’t able to find it. Does anyone have a link to such info? If not, and if you need a great research topic for a Masters or PhD., then doing the research might be a great thesis topic.
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11 Answers
I open pages i a new tab, just in case of this, so I can juse close it.
Much more quickly than I did back on Netscape, that’s for sure :-p
Fairly quickly. If a webpage is loaded with so much junk that it takes forever to load, I’m very done with it. Unless, of course, it’s something I really need to get to.
I am a very patient person, so I generally give a web page all the time it needs to load, unless it is obvious that the browser is stuck or the browser itself returns the error message that it can’t find the page. Probably around 2 minutes.
I have been doing the “open a new window” or “open a new tab” as soon as I get on the computer and I just go to the other tabs or windows while loading. I am too impatient.
If it is taking more than it usually takes I usually get impatient and try another site. I word it that way because my laptop takes longer for everything than my ipad, so on my ipad I have very little patience, but with my laptop I will wait much longer. I know you didn’t ask this, but if a website has some sort of pop like box covering the main content I want to read I sometimes leave the site just for that it pisses me off so much.
@ragingloli F5 is the reload function. When a page is already slow loading, why press F5 and start over again?
@XOIIO Good strategy.
@bookish1 Amen to that. Gah, Netscape. Brings back nightmarish memories.
@Plucky Same here. Thanks.
@2davidc8 Fascinating. Thank you.
@flo Great strategy. I often do that as well.
@JLeslie Sounds like time for a new laptop or netbook.
@ETpro Regarding @ragingloli‘s comment: sometimes F5 works, and I think that’s because of the following:
As you know, to render a web page, there’s a ton of back-and-forth communication between computers. The information you see on a page may be coming from several different sources, i.e., several different servers. Sometimes, somehow, the browser gets “stuck” in the process or gets lost along the way and seems to sit and wait for a resource that never comes. In this case, it’s helpful to just reload the page and start over.
Before the blink of an eye, I am not known for my patience!
@2davidc8 OIC. Thanks for explaining that.
@ZEPHYRA I’m thinking that is the average response.
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