In the old days (maybe a year ago) saying “patience is a virtue” or maybe “patience is its own reward” may have been an okay attitude to have when your company/business website slowly loaded. After all, why shouldn’t your prospective clients/customers wait (only a few seconds after all) to see what marvelous information you have on your site?
Those days of prospective clients/customers waiting patiently for even a few seconds are gone — replaced by “if it’s not immediate I’m out of here NOW!”
I have written about this before in terms of discouraging anyone from considering a Flash opening for a website. Flash slows down the load speed and, if used at all, should be used for small areas on some pages of a website.
And to be perfectly clear, I’m not even talking about the SEO gurus warning us that Google has decided to care about website load speed when returning results for searches on Google.
I’m simply talking about how busy we all are and how many websites, social media sites, YouTube videos, etc. call out for our attention.
If you are working really hard to bring people to your site, make sure that your site load speed as well as any important videos on your site load very, very quickly.
The concern about videos was brought home to me when an Internet marketer connected with me online. He wanted me to look at his website page focused on interesting other Internet marketers in his project.
The video that explained his new project took FOREVER (in my mind) to load. If I hadn’t been scheduled to have a phone call with him a few minutes later, I would never have stuck around to watch the video. Fairly or unfairly, I would have decided that, if he didn’t know enough to have the video load immediately, how much could he know about other Internet marketing things.
As it turned out, this entrepreneur had an open mindset and, within a couple of hours of speaking with me, reshot his video (I suggested he needed to look straight at the camera instead of his eyes frequently skittering off to the side) and changed his site so that the video began immediately.
Caution: We all have to remember that, when we look at our own sites. we are of course going to stick around and look at what’s on offer. But people new to our site aren’t necessarily going to stick around if it takes too long to figure out what’s on offer. (Website visitors shouldn’t have to figure out what’s on offer — it should be immediately obvious.)
For example, I clicked through to a site from a Twitter profile link of someone who had just followed me. The site’s Flash took several seconds to load, and then I still had no idea what was on offer. The name of the group wasn’t a big indication, so I clicked on the nav button “What We Do.”
More Flash — and then a long, dense single paragraph in small reverse (white) type that I DID NOT READ. Three strikes: small type, reverse body type, single long paragraph instead of several short paragraphs.
Please, please remember that patience is no longer a virtue. Let me know the instant I come to your site whether what you have on offer is for me. If not, I’ll go elsewhere. And the people for whom your offer is intended are much more likely to stay and find out about that offer.
(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC
FYI — Check out our $97 45-minute website review to help you get a handle on how your site can be improved in the era of “no patience.”
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: WordsmithBob
April 26, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I actually recommend to clients that they get people to try out their website. Preferrably, customers or clients. Because these people are very similar to the people that will likely visit your site. Offer them a $25 gift card at their favorite restaurant to bribe them to do it. You don’t need 20 people to test your website. Seven or eight will do fine.
Have them record their observations immediately afterwards and email them to you. And have them either test at their office or at home. Never at your business with you hovering over them.
Bob –
This is invaluable advice. I love the idea of offering people a gift card for testing the site.
And I would agree that 20 people aren’t needed. By the seventh or eight person it will be very clear where the problems are.