lammert - 1:42 pm on Mar 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

FBIB of 2 to 3 seconds is long. If I encounter such a website my mouse is already hovering above the back button when the screen is white for more than 2 seconds. A few years ago I wouldn't have had any problem with waiting 15 seconds for a page to open, but I now expect a remote website to open faster than my local word-processor can open a new document.

Besides the FBIB there are some more statistics interesting for your pages:

• When does the first real content arrive in the browser. I am not talking about menus or ads, but about content which will keep the reader busy while the rest of the page loads. As soon as the visitor can start reading, the remaining time to load images etc. will not be seen as annoying anymore.
• When are all external js files loaded. Many websites rely for internal navigation on javascript menus. When these menus are loaded from an external .js file, it can take a few extra seconds before the site is navigateable.