New tool calculates financial impact of slow page load times

Page load time is a big issue. Consumers expect an immediate response from a website, no matter which network or device they access it from. For some marketers speeding up their webpage load times isn't high on their list of priorities, but perhaps a new tool that calculates the financial impact of sluggish sites will make them take a closer look.

by Helen Leggatt

Marketers are constantly being warned of the consequences of slow page load times, particularly website abandonment. Now, marketers can get a better insight into the potential loss of revenue a slow loading site can cause, thanks to a new tool from Compuware's Gomez Inc.

The calculator, called FAST (short for Financial Analysis Support Tool) asks the user for basic data, such as conversion rates, average transaction values and web page load time, and calculates the financial impact. FAST is built around real-world observations of customer behavior including page abandonment rate data aggregated across more than 150 websites, 34,000 webpages and over 150 million page views recorded between November 10 and December 10, 2009.

So, exactly how much patience do Internet users, particularly shoppers, have? Very little, according to the results of a recent Akamai/Forrester study. It found that online shoppers expect to wait no more than 2 seconds for a page to load. In fact, 40% would wait no more than three seconds before abandoning the site altogether.

"Competitors are a second away, so organizations can't give customers any excuse to click away, as this tool clearly illustrates," said Bob Paul, president and COO of Gomez Inc.'s parent, Compuware Corporation.

Tags: marketing tools, online tool, page load times, website abandonment, website performance