40% Of Internet Shoppers Don’t Wait 10 Seconds For Sites To Load

Sites include Amazon.com . Published on November 14th, 2011. Written by Anthony West.

It has long been established that the internet with its ubiquity of information, extensive choice pools and rapid speed has made the average web user very impatient. But the extent of that impatience has never been quantified as such—until now.

According to a new study conducted by cloud-computing giant, Rackspace who surveyed 2000 UK adults 18 and over to gauge their thoughts and expectations when using websites. A whopping 38% of those surveyed cited a waiting cut-off point of around 10 seconds. Any longer for the web page or app to load and they would abandon the process and the site entirely. Of that impatient bunch, a staggering 45% did not revisit the site, choosing instead to use a competitor’s website to carry out the transaction or process.

The question to ask therefore is whether 10 seconds is too short a threshold standard for websites. When you look at the load times of the top websites on a standard broadband connection (12Mbps), sites like Amazon take only a couple to a few seconds to load—and this is despite sites like Amazon being absolutely huge in terms of graphics and other page elements. So in many respects, 10 seconds is too long and any web business who wants to compete will naturally have to work hard to stay below this threshold.

Do you wait longer than 10 seconds for a web page to load? Share your preference with us in the comments below.

1 Responses »

1. 

   H Peltan

   January 30, 2012 • 1:18 pm

   Sometimes it does seem that everybody is too impatient but 10 seconds is too long for anybody to wait for a website to upload, many practical, useful sites load in just over a second.

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