How to Lose a Customer
in Five Seconds

© by Pamela Bruce; all rights reserved

I just came across an article proving something I had long suspected: "Four seconds is the maximum length of time an average online shopper will wait for a Web page to load before potentially abandoning a retail site."

This study shows that you lose potential customers if your jewelry website takes too long too load. What can you do to avoid this? The answer is: Keep it simple! Here are some suggestions:

• Avoid Flash-based introductions.

  I generally back out of these sites before the intro has even finished playing. At best, I look for a "Skip the Intro" button, which means that I do not really look at it.

• Avoid music.

  While this might not add to the load time, you should consider that some users might access your site from an office computer. Once music starts playing, they will probably hit the back button on their browser before colleagues or supervisors start looking at what they are doing.

• Avoid animations.

  I remember coming across one jewelry website where animated text (Click here!) started popping up every time the cursor moved near a "Buy it now" button. Not only did this slow down page load and scrolling times, it was also extremely annoying.

• Keep your graphics files small.

  Yes, you want to show off your beautiful handcrafted jewelry, but not necessarily with 800 k images. Crop your images, save them at somewhat lower quality settings, or simply use thumbnails instead.

• Avoid irrelevant graphics.

  It is nice to know that you have a faithful dog or a cute cat, but you do not necessarily have to display their pictures on your starting page.

• Avoid the endless scroll.

  I have seen a number of websites that are really very long single pages, and you have to scroll and scroll and scroll....

  Your starting page should be a gateway that introduces your work and leads users quickly to areas that interest them (conversely, every sub page should also contain navigation elements that allow the user to return to the homepage or to jump to other sections).

  If a user cannot scroll down because your gigantic homepage is still loading, he or she will most likely leave your site.

• Keep important information "above the fold".

  If you look at a newspaper, you will notice that the most important headlines are located in the top half, where they can be seen if the paper is displayed folded. Remember that not everyone will see your site at a resolution of 1280 by 960 or 1024 by 768. You can use this screen size tester to see what your website would look like with a resolution of 600 by 800 or even 640 by 480.

  This shows you how much a user would have to scroll vertically and horizontally to see everything on your page. If you want to know how many users view your website with a certain screen resolution, you can either look at the log files provided by your ISP or install a free tracker such as eWeb Counter.

So how can you find out how long it takes to load your homepage? You could time it yourself, or ask some friends to check on it, but there is an easier method. Use this loading time checker to see how long your website takes to load. The results page will also give you some advice about problem areas.

Do not forget that there are still millions of users out there accessing the WWW with dial-up modems! While you should focus first on optimizing your homepage, you might also check some important sub pages to avoid any potential bottlenecks.

Speeding up load times will not guarantee that visitors turn into buyers, but you will avoid losing potential buyers before they ever had a chance of seeing your beautiful designs!

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