Average site load time

how long is 'acceptable'?

[hayluke]

We're about to launch a new site here and we are having some performance issues with it. Running tests on it shows that the amount of traffic to the site does not really have a huge impact on it at the moment but it runs quite slowly with only one or two users on it.

My question is does anyone have any statistics to show a rough average for pages to download? Basically I'd like to know how long users will be prepared to wait for the homepage of my site to load completely..

I know this is quite a vague topic but any ball park figures (or where to look for them) would be greatly appreciated..

thanks,
luke

[Eric_Jarvis]

I was taught that anything over 10 seconds is likely to start losing you significant numbers of people...I try to stay close to 5kB for an index page

[brotherhood of LAN]

>10 seconds.

Well my 56 modem on average downloads about 4k per second, so I guess that agrees with that thread (posted way back) about the 40k sweet spot.

It sounds like a good target, because it seems lots of people still use modems.

But with using .css, the cache etc etc, you can get most of your "design template" cached as the surfer goes through the site, so load time becomes less of an issue. 40k or less and I'd find it acceptable IMO :)

[Nick_W]

Yes, I always think (due to much reading on the subject in the past) that you should see something within the first 4secs and ideally the page should be done within 8

If you are using tables for layout, break them up so that the 'header' table get's loaded first providing primary navigaion and an idea of what kind of site it is.

Avoid the 'one big table' trap, slow modems and dodgy PC's will take much longer to render than you could achieve with little optimixation.

As mentioned, CSS!! 'nuf said.

Nick

[chris_f]

I agree with Nick_W. Get something back with 3 seconds and get the whole page back with 8-10 seconds. This is on a 56k connection.

Chris.

[pageoneresults]

Hello Nick_W. I used to work with tables and originally designed using separate tables as I worked down the page. The problem I ran into was that NS4.x displayed the tables incorrectly, way too much gap between them. I then started designing with the one all encompassing table and eliminated the problem. Never really saw any performance issues to speak of.

Now that I'm using CSS and absolute positioning, I've seen dramatic increases in performance. When I do use tables, I use them sparingly (only for forms and multiple columns within a <div>. Haven't progressed to that level of CSS expertise yet!

With CSS and Absolute Positioning, I can insure that my main content is viewable while the rest of the surrounding graphics and/or information is loading. I'm assuming the visitors are there for the content, not the graphics. If they see the content first and can start reading, the graphics will load momentarily.

[uk_dokey]

The trouble with absolute positioning is that when your Netscape visitors view you page they will see everything absolutely on the left hand side. Try browsing your page with Netscape and you'll see what I mean. When I was new to this we paid a lot of money for some design work that used this. I had to rework it all using tables to make sure it was fine.

[pageoneresults]

Hello there uk_dokey! How long ago was it that you were new to this? The reason I ask that is if it were a couple of years ago, then I might support your argument. Today, that is untrue unless of course the CSS is not correct.

I just did a quick check on 5 of the sites that I manage using NN4.73 and everything was perfect. In fact, the sites looked identical in each browser with the exception of a few borders here and there. Since I'm using the @import command, learned here at Webmaster World, I no longer have to limit my design techniques because of NN4.x. Now my NN4.x users get their own styled web site just for them, how special is that?

Absolute positioning if used properly is far superior to utilizing tables, from my perspective. I've managed to decrease the page download times considerably by utilizing a mix of Absolutely Positioned <div>'s and then tables for complex form elements.

If you are using a version of Netscape before NN4.x, then I'm not sure what you may be seeing. Even with sites not using Absolute Positioning, there has to be lots of issues!

[Nick_W]

You can even use absolute positionioning with relative values like:

#content {
position: absolute;
top: 50px;
left: 25%;
width: 70%;
}

Netscape mucks this up royally of course, but then if it's important it's not so tough to sniff out nn4 and serve the naughtly little bugger a seperate sheet.

...about the tables, I didn't ever notice much in performance either, i think you'd have to have a very old pc to notice.

Nick