Wait. Pause. Delay. Patience. People hate to wait. Don’t make then wait on your web site to load. I’ll show you how to check the load time of your web site.

Wait. Pause. Delay. Patience.

In life, at our jobs, at school, in traffic, we all have to wait. We don’t want to do it when it comes to accessing a web page. “Slow response times and difficult navigation are the most common complaints of Internet users. After waiting past a certain “attention threshold,” users bail out to look for a faster site.” [Websiteoptimization.com]

How long do you typically wait for a site to load before you abandon it and move on to greener pastures (with faster servers)? Ten seconds? Five? Maybe fifteen, if it’s a trusted site that I am familiar with.

One of the great hurdles that users face when browsing the internet is slow load times for web pages. This is especially true for users with dial-up connections as opposed to those with high speed (cable, DSL) connections.

As a web designer, what should your goal be when developing a page? How fast should it load? According to Weboptimzation.com, a web site should load in under 8.6 seconds. Does your web site meet this standard?

Using the FREE Web Page Analyzer, provided by WebSiteOptimization.com, you can test the load time of your site and receive recommendations on how to improve the speed and usability.

In addition to providing the Web Page Analyzer, they also provide a Speed Tweak of the Week which can help you Tweak your HTML, Graphics, Server, CSS and more to help you optimize your pages.

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