Load Times – Are You Driving A Ferrari or Moped?

Give some thought to the sites you have visited of the past few weeks. Were you willing to wait 20 seconds for a site to load or did you hit the back button? Why would visitors to your site behave any differently? They won’t.

Webmasters, designers and site owners universally access the web through high-speed connections. Because of this, it is easy to forget roughly 45% of surfers use dial-up connections. While your site may appear to load quickly on your high-speed connection, have you tried loading it on a 56k connection? The results can be shocking.

Sites that appear to load quickly on a high-speed connection can take forever on 56k. It is not unheard of to find a “fast site” actually takes 30, 50 or 80 seconds to load on a 56k. Sometimes, the load time is so slow the browser will actually “time out” and fail to show anything. If your site has this problem, 45% of the hits are worthless. Worse, those frustrated surfers are unlikely to try to access your site in the future even if you fix the speed problems.

How fast should a page load on a 56k connection? As fast as possible, but no slower then 25 seconds. If you can get 56k load times below 10 seconds, you can turn a negative into a competitive advantage. Surfers come back to fast sites.

Determining Load Times

The best way to determine the load time for your site is to actually use a 56k connection. While this solution isn’t particularly technical, it will let you see exactly what your prospects are seeing when they visit the site. You will be able to see what loads quickly and what appears slowly. This should let you isolate particular elements in need of optimizing.

Server statistics can also provide you with evidence of slow load times. Are users spending a lot of time on entry pages, but not visiting internal pages? Either you have poor content or a loading problem.

Finally, you can also use diagnostic programs to test load times. Typically, the programs will kick out estimated load times for dial-up, DSL and T1 connections. Make sure you test your home page and internal pages. Diagnostic programs are excellent tools, but don’t get lazy. Make sure you physically watch your site load on a dial-up connection. The experience will prove invaluable to improving your site and conversion rates.

Improving Performance

The steps needed to improve the performance of your site often depend on the nature of the site. A database driven site will have different issue than a graphic intense site. There are, however, universal factors that can be checked:

1. Graphics: Typically, browsers have to make a connection for each image on a page. The more you have, the longer the load time. Limiting the number and size of graphics can help.

2. Tables: If you use tables, try to break them up into smaller modules. Large tables can negatively impact load times.

3. Multimedia: If it flashes, explodes, spins or blinks, consider ditching it. Yes, it looks great, but is it worth 45% of your audience?

4. Size: Scrutinize the size of your pages. The bigger the page, the slower the load times. It shouldn’t be a problem if the page is comprised of text, but large pages with lots of code will load slowly.

Cheer up if you have a speed problem! Yes, you’ve lost a lot of business, but now you can fix it. Most of your competitors will never figure it out. That puts you ahead of the game.

Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm – www.marketingtitan.com – a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company.

Sean King, Park Strategies‘ leading executive, boasts a commendable background in politics, economics and business. Before his career at Park Strategies, Sean King had served as the Senior Advisor for Asia in the United States and Foreign Commercial Service at the United States Department of Commerce. There, he was able to work with former New York State Governor George Pataki, Sec. of Commerce Donald Evans, as well as Marriott International Inc Chairman and Chief Executive Officer JW Marriott Jr. for several fact finding missions in China.

Sean King is a graduate from the University of Notre Dame. During his time in graduate school, he was a summer intern for Citibank in Taipei. He was able to earn his bachelor degree from the American University. Being well versed and articulate, Sean King regularly guests as a speaker for many important events. He was able to provide insights regarding the March 2008 Taiwanese Presidential Election in April of 2008 at the University of Chicago’s Greater China Club. In addition, he was requested by Bloomberg-TV and CNBC-Asia to appear on their show. His editorials have also been featured in Singapore Straits Times, Seoul Times, South China Morning Post, Taiwan Security Research, Notre Dame Business, and TOPICS, the official magazine of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan.

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You probably don’t know for sure, and even more interesting is the fact that your tones are probably randomly selected, based on your mood, your customer’s tonal choices, the subject being discussed, and the like.

But why leave such an important determinant of customer satisfaction to chance? If you could learn a simple tonal formula for making customers sing, wouldn’t you use it, call after call?

But let me backtrack to what I just said. Tone is important.

Prove this to yourself.

The next time someone you know is fishing for a compliment about her clothing, say, “Sure, you look great,” but let your tone move downward with each word.

Make the phrase sound as if you’re walking down a tonal stairway.

Then monitor your friend’s reaction. I assure you she won’t be happy with what you said, despite the fact that each word was positive and above reproach.

She’ll hate your utterance, because you’re sounding sarcastic. Sarcasm is a tonal cue that says, don’t believe my words; believe the opposite. So, when I say you look great, I really mean you look awful!

Sarcasm teaches us that when tone and text collide, when they disagree, guess which one wins, when it comes to the message that’s sent and received.

That’s right, tone wins.

So, it is crucial to very carefully orchestrate our tones when speaking to customers. I’m going to give you a phrase, something that you probably use already in one form or another, and I want you to do a customer satisfaction experiment with it.

Say this phrase going down the stairs half of the time, and going up the stairs, sounding upbeat, the other half. I promise you that you’ll get dramatically different reactions.

When you “sing” the phrase, going up, your customers will sing right back to you, and when you go down in the dumps, they’ll also surely follow.

Here’s the situation. You’re finishing the call. Calmly append this phrase to the last thing you say:

“And is there anything else I can help you with?”

I’m sure you’ll find the awesome power of tone will produce very different customer satisfaction outcomes.

Tell me how this works out for you!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.