Kufu - 4:09 pm on Nov 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

The moment he clicks on a link he does not yet know if the website will even offer what he is looking for and if it's worth waiting.

Exactly!

I am not saying four seconds is reasonable, but if it's a site I am visiting for the first time, and it doesn't load quickly (whatever that may be) I am not going back; however, there are sites that I shop from regularly, and sometimes the connection is just slow, and I have waited more than 20 seconds for pages to load.

Naturally, the faster the load-time the better, but I have not seen many sites that consistently load slower than 8 to 10 seconds per page.