Re:Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic
by patio11 on Wednesday February 04, 2009 @08:37PM
(#466919)
Here's an example which made me quite a bit of money. My website basically looks like this:
AAAAAA
CBBBBB
CBBBBB
CBBBBB
CDDDDD
CDDDDD
CDDDDD
CDDDDD
Most users will have their screen break a bit above the end of the B block. (By design.)
The heaviest part of the page is D. Eliminating it is not an attractive option -- the overall conversion rate suffers. The most valuable parts of the conversion pathway are in B and C. The first thing the customer sees is invariably A.
Solution: a bit of technical magic to make sure that the website loads element in A->C->B->D order (there is a competing technical imperative which means that in the HTML it makes more sense to order them A->B->D->C), and significant microoptimization of how quickly B and C are minimally interactive to the user. (We're talking measuring improvements in the kilobytes or tens of microseconds range.) Since customers have to actively scroll down to engage the D block, and since most do not engage the D block before first engaging the B block, the fact that D is heavy and slow very rarely impacts their experience.
AAAAAA
CBBBBB
CBBBBB
CBBBBB
CDDDDD
CDDDDD
CDDDDD
CDDDDD
Most users will have their screen break a bit above the end of the B block. (By design.)
The heaviest part of the page is D. Eliminating it is not an attractive option -- the overall conversion rate suffers. The most valuable parts of the conversion pathway are in B and C. The first thing the customer sees is invariably A.
Solution: a bit of technical magic to make sure that the website loads element in A->C->B->D order (there is a competing technical imperative which means that in the HTML it makes more sense to order them A->B->D->C), and significant microoptimization of how quickly B and C are minimally interactive to the user. (We're talking measuring improvements in the kilobytes or tens of microseconds range.) Since customers have to actively scroll down to engage the D block, and since most do not engage the D block before first engaging the B block, the fact that D is heavy and slow very rarely impacts their experience.