The Need For Speed
Posted Under: Website Usability
The need for speed is important to both internet marketers and webmasters who create their websites as well as to the visitors who use their sites.
Time is a valuable commodity in this day and age. When users institute a web search for something, they expect an answer to their query immediately if not sooner.
Google, Yahoo and the other search engines do their best with their algorithms to provide that service to end users who use their web browsers.
The need for speed while browsing is important, and when an end user locates your website, they expect it to load quickly. If it does not, your site will be passed over for the next ranking site in the search response.
When you are creating your web site, especially a marketing site, it pays to understand this need for speed.
The average response time for a search engine result is a fraction of a second and with each new release of a web browser, the speed records seem to consistently get broken.
The main goal for Google, Yahoo, and the other web browsers is to have their users leave their websites (browsers) as fast as possible.
On the other hand, as an internet marketer, your goal is to have visitors remain on your website as long as possible.
In order to do this, you must have a logically laid out website that loads almost instantaneously, and immediately captures and holds the attention of your visitors. This is especially true with mobile sites.
As the need for speed continues to be a major factor with the search engines, it also becomes more important to web developers and internet marketers.
The ways to tweak your website load times for the search engines vary from minimizing the size of your header file, to using CDN networks (particularly if you have a very large website), to reducing the amount of picture files used, etc.
When building smartphone optimized websites, the use of responsive web design is highly recommended for a variety of reasons.
Websites with responsive web design automatically adapt to mobile or other types of devices.
Images, navigation, content and text size automatically adapt to the screen size of the device that the user is viewing your website on.
Responsive design can also benefit the loading speed of your site when viewed in a mobile device.
Being cognizant of the need for speed will greatly improve your bottom line if your website has a clear, simple homepage interface, with pages that load instantly.