4 ms·

I wonder if anyone has studied the impact of latency on user behavior while considering the impact of user expectations from their typical connection speed. Whe

I wonder if anyone has studied the impact of latency on user behavior while considering the impact of user expectations from their typical connection speed. Whenever I see an article about page speed optimization, the assumption is that a user will give up if a page takes too long to load, ans that everyone gives up after X seconds. Usually X is about 7s based on a Nielson article from years and years ago. The thing is tbough, a user who frequently uses satellite Internet or a 2G mobile connection will learn that pages take a while to download over that connection, and they will adjust their expectations accordingly. Satellite Internet users aren't giving up on pages every 7s. They're waiting because they know the page will load slowly. I suspect most users wait for a page if most pages are slow. So long as your website is no slower than the average then you're probably not losing many visitors. Obviously that's not to say you shouldn't make your website as fast as you can. You should. Everyone will appreciate the effort. But don't assume that knocking a few seconds off the TTI time will actually impact your conversion metrics. It probably won't (but only a proper study can prove it either way).

johnchristopher 4y ago
> I wonder if anyone has studied the impact of latency on user behavior while considering the impact of user expectations from their typical connection speed. Whenever I see an article about page speed optimization, the assumption is that a user will give up if a page takes too long to load, ans that everyone gives up after X seconds. Usually X is about 7s based on a Nielson article from years and years ago. N=1 but I think I am quicker to close a tab with a website that does lazy loading and/or hide stuff for a blink second or three just after showing me the thing I am here for than a tab with a slow loading.
- fvold 4y ago
  N=2
iainmerrick 4y ago
I don’t have a citation handy, but this is something that Google has famously studied. They claimed years ago that a tiny increase in the loading time of the Google home page led to a measurable decrease in the number of searches (like, a few percent). Not everyone is operating “at Google scale”, of course, but in aggregate the effect is real and faster-loading pages have better metrics. So, most satellite internet users won’t give up just because your page is slow, but some of them will, and even the ones that persevere will likely appreciate a faster page.
- onion2k 4y ago
  most satellite internet users won’t give up just because your page is slow My point is that 'slow' is a relative measure against other websites, not an objective value. So long as your website is faster than a typical website then users won't give up. Trying to be faster than average is worthwhile, but trying to be as fast as possible might not bring any additional value. It's also possible (likely, in my opinion) that the website itself is important too. People expect Google to be fast because it's made by the biggest internet company there is, and perhaps because the page itself is very simple. It's just a textbox on a page. Surely it should be fast. That doesn't mean people have the same expectations for grannys-discount-wool.com. This is a complex problem that probably doesn't have a straightforward answer. Using the mantra 'make your website as fast as possible' means you won't get it wrong, so it's worth doing, but you almost certainly get diminishing returns for that effort as you optimize for things like shaving off milliseconds and bytes. Unless you're Google. Although... that said... if Google really thought sites should be as fast as possible, wouldn't they make a smaller GoogleTagManager.js script?
  - iainmerrick 4y ago
    This is a complex problem that probably doesn't have a straightforward answer. Using the mantra 'make your website as fast as possible' means you won't get it wrong, so it's worth doing, but you almost certainly get diminishing returns for that effort as you optimize for things like shaving off milliseconds and bytes. Yeah, that's fair. My point (really just repeating hearsay -- I should check that Google research still stands up!) is just that load time optimization apparently has a bigger benefit than you might expect, and the diminishing returns don't kick in until much later than you'd expect. Edit to add: and the post being discussed has a good point that there's a performance shelf at ~14KB, so a small improvement can have a big impact. Although... that said... if Google really thought sites should be as fast as possible, wouldn't they make a smaller GoogleTagManager.js script? A good question! They're definitely not the most consistent. The left hand says one thing, some of their thousand right hands do the exact opposite...
    - merely-unlikely 4y ago
SquareWheel 4y ago
Back in 2006, Amazon found that every 100ms of delay cost them 1% of sales. Google similarly found that a 500ms increase caused search traffic to drop 20%. These are older anecdotes, but there's no reason to think that people have gotten more patient as internet connections have become high-speed. https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/page-speed-resources/faq/amazon-page-speed-study/ https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/page-speed-resources/...
ivan_gammel 4y ago
At one of my recent jobs (EU-wide consumer healtech) we managed to reduce bounce rate by addressing a number of issues indicated by DevTools, mostly focusing on time to render and time to interact. It indeed positively impacted conversion and I guess this is a common knowledge among marketing teams by now, that this works.
- onion2k 4y ago
  I think it's fairly obvious that a faster website is better. I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that there is a point where improving your website when it's already better than competing websites stops giving you enough value to be worthwhile. If you're in the bottom half of websites then you're giving up money and you need to improve. If you're in the top half, or top quarter, or whatever then maybe that engineering effort could be used to generate more revenue in more effective ways than just cranking up perf. You could probably improve speed forever and always see a measurable improvement, but if that's costing more than you're seeing in added conversions, or you're doing it instead of improving features that would net a greater return, then you're doing the wrong thing.
  - ivan_gammel 4y ago
    >What I'm saying is that there is a point where improving your website when it's already better than competing websites stops giving you enough value to be worthwhile. There's indeed a point where optimizations stop yielding meaningful results, but it is certainly not connected to the performance of competitor websites. As soon as an user lands on your website, only its own performance and accessibility matters and positive ROI can still be achieved well beyond the point when your start doing better than competition. Where did you get this idea about competing websites from?
    - fendy3002 4y ago
      Not competing website but other average website in general. Say that averagely HN load for 1000ms and it's positioned around top 15% fastest. And if your website load for 1100 ~ 1200ms will be okay. OP's point is, if you're able to speed up to range of 800 ~ 900ms it may not resulting in much higher conversion. However if your site is at 1800ms range it's worthwhile to increase to 1200ms range
dieulot 4y ago
See https://wpostats.com/ https://wpostats.com/ which lists known conversion metrics improvements. There are pages upon pages of them.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Seeing things like "SportsShoes.com found that faster-than-average mobile visits were 41% more likely to convert than slower-than-average visits." suggests I might be right...

johnchristopher 4y ago

> I wonder if anyone has studied the impact of latency on user behavior while considering the impact of user expectations from their typical connection speed. Whenever I see an article about page speed optimization, the assumption is that a user will give up if a page takes too long to load, ans that everyone gives up after X seconds. Usually X is about 7s based on a Nielson article from years and years ago. N=1 but I think I am quicker to close a tab with a website that does lazy loading and/or hide stuff for a blink second or three just after showing me the thing I am here for than a tab with a slow loading.

fvold 4y ago
N=2

iainmerrick 4y ago

I don’t have a citation handy, but this is something that Google has famously studied. They claimed years ago that a tiny increase in the loading time of the Google home page led to a measurable decrease in the number of searches (like, a few percent). Not everyone is operating “at Google scale”, of course, but in aggregate the effect is real and faster-loading pages have better metrics. So, most satellite internet users won’t give up just because your page is slow, but some of them will, and even the ones that persevere will likely appreciate a faster page.

onion2k 4y ago
most satellite internet users won’t give up just because your page is slow My point is that 'slow' is a relative measure against other websites, not an objective value. So long as your website is faster than a typical website then users won't give up. Trying to be faster than average is worthwhile, but trying to be as fast as possible might not bring any additional value. It's also possible (likely, in my opinion) that the website itself is important too. People expect Google to be fast because it's made by the biggest internet company there is, and perhaps because the page itself is very simple. It's just a textbox on a page. Surely it should be fast. That doesn't mean people have the same expectations for grannys-discount-wool.com. This is a complex problem that probably doesn't have a straightforward answer. Using the mantra 'make your website as fast as possible' means you won't get it wrong, so it's worth doing, but you almost certainly get diminishing returns for that effort as you optimize for things like shaving off milliseconds and bytes. Unless you're Google. Although... that said... if Google really thought sites should be as fast as possible, wouldn't they make a smaller GoogleTagManager.js script?
- iainmerrick 4y ago
  This is a complex problem that probably doesn't have a straightforward answer. Using the mantra 'make your website as fast as possible' means you won't get it wrong, so it's worth doing, but you almost certainly get diminishing returns for that effort as you optimize for things like shaving off milliseconds and bytes. Yeah, that's fair. My point (really just repeating hearsay -- I should check that Google research still stands up!) is just that load time optimization apparently has a bigger benefit than you might expect, and the diminishing returns don't kick in until much later than you'd expect. Edit to add: and the post being discussed has a good point that there's a performance shelf at ~14KB, so a small improvement can have a big impact. Although... that said... if Google really thought sites should be as fast as possible, wouldn't they make a smaller GoogleTagManager.js script? A good question! They're definitely not the most consistent. The left hand says one thing, some of their thousand right hands do the exact opposite...
  - merely-unlikely 4y ago

SquareWheel 4y ago

Back in 2006, Amazon found that every 100ms of delay cost them 1% of sales. Google similarly found that a 500ms increase caused search traffic to drop 20%. These are older anecdotes, but there's no reason to think that people have gotten more patient as internet connections have become high-speed. https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/page-speed-resources/faq/amazon-page-speed-study/ https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/page-speed-resources/...

ivan_gammel 4y ago

At one of my recent jobs (EU-wide consumer healtech) we managed to reduce bounce rate by addressing a number of issues indicated by DevTools, mostly focusing on time to render and time to interact. It indeed positively impacted conversion and I guess this is a common knowledge among marketing teams by now, that this works.

onion2k 4y ago
I think it's fairly obvious that a faster website is better. I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that there is a point where improving your website when it's already better than competing websites stops giving you enough value to be worthwhile. If you're in the bottom half of websites then you're giving up money and you need to improve. If you're in the top half, or top quarter, or whatever then maybe that engineering effort could be used to generate more revenue in more effective ways than just cranking up perf. You could probably improve speed forever and always see a measurable improvement, but if that's costing more than you're seeing in added conversions, or you're doing it instead of improving features that would net a greater return, then you're doing the wrong thing.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  >What I'm saying is that there is a point where improving your website when it's already better than competing websites stops giving you enough value to be worthwhile. There's indeed a point where optimizations stop yielding meaningful results, but it is certainly not connected to the performance of competitor websites. As soon as an user lands on your website, only its own performance and accessibility matters and positive ROI can still be achieved well beyond the point when your start doing better than competition. Where did you get this idea about competing websites from?
  - fendy3002 4y ago
    Not competing website but other average website in general. Say that averagely HN load for 1000ms and it's positioned around top 15% fastest. And if your website load for 1100 ~ 1200ms will be okay. OP's point is, if you're able to speed up to range of 800 ~ 900ms it may not resulting in much higher conversion. However if your site is at 1800ms range it's worthwhile to increase to 1200ms range

dieulot 4y ago

See https://wpostats.com/ https://wpostats.com/ which lists known conversion metrics improvements. There are pages upon pages of them.

onion2k 4y ago
Seeing things like "SportsShoes.com found that faster-than-average mobile visits were 41% more likely to convert than slower-than-average visits." suggests I might be right...