Does your site pass the four seconds rule?

Posted by Offer Tsuriel on October 26, 2009

Research from Akamai (2006) shows that content needs to load rapidly -within four seconds otherwise site experience suffers and visitors will leave the site. The research also showed, however, that high product price/shipping costs and problems with shipping were both considered more important than speed. However, for sites perceived to have poor performance, many shoppers said they were less likely to visit the site again (64%) or buy from the e-retailer (62%).
These practical tips for designers developed by accessibility specialist Trenton Moss of Webcredible (Webcredible, 2004) show how approaches to coding pages can make a difference. So make sure your site designers optimize for speed, not simply focusing on visual design.

 

1. Layout your pages with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)’ not tables
2. Don’t use images to display text
3. Call up decorative images through CSS
4. Use contextual selectors (use classes to format)
5. Use shorthand CSS properties
6. Minimize white space [within code]. line returns and comment tags
7. Use relative call-ups Remove unnecessary META tags and META content Put CSS and JavaScript into external documents Use / at the end of directory links.