Part 2 of our ongoing study on “Mobile Site Speed & The Impact on Web Performance”

This is the second blog post in our brand-new series on “Mobile Site Speed & the Impact on E-Commerce” that explores the relationship between good web performance and business success. Today’s post kickstarts our series by looking at what users expect from the websites they use and how their behavior is influenced by Web performance. We focus on three different factors in this post. (Details: speedstudy.info)

The User Profile is Important

The first factor is the user profile with information such as gender, region, nationality, and age.

In general, younger users tend to be more demanding when it comes to page load times. According to a Brain Food study [2], only half of all users between 18 and 24 years perceive today’s loading times as fast, while 73% in the age bracket of 35 to 44 feel that way. Separating user expectations by gender, an Unbounce survey [1] suggests that women are also more sensitive to loading times than men: More than 80% of female participants in the age bracket from 18 to 24 years stated they were less likely to buy on websites that felt slow, whereas less than 20% of male participants said the same about themselves. And expectations also differ by country: While 30% of users worldwide expect a page load of one second or less according to Akamai [3], this holds true for a whopping 52% of users when only considering Japan. A similar result was observed by Unbounce [1] when interviewing consumers located in New York and California: When 82% of the New Yorkers explained that speed influenced their buying decisions, only 60% of Californians agreed.

The Market is Heterogeneous

The device and operating system are also important factors for user experience and behavior.

In 2015, Akamai [3] found out that most users preferred using a desktop for shopping purposes and considered it faster than shopping with a mobile device. Contrastingly, though, most users still preferred their mobile phones or tablets for browsing and product search. Furthermore, those users who did buy via mobile device, did so more often than the average desktop user: 35% of mobile shoppers were found to buy at least once a week, whereas only 15% of desktop buyers achieved the same frequency.

Mobile traffic has steadily increased over the past years and now clearly dominates desktop traffic when it comes to page visits [7]. A study considering the iOS and Android segments of the mobile market [1] observed significant differences regarding patience: Some users were apparently willing to wait 11–13 seconds for their website to load, but of those 61% were using Android and only 36% were iOS.

Loading time might thus be even more critical for websites with an iOS-heavy user base. But there is no clear winner, if we take a look at the global distribution of Android and iOS. While iOS is the preferred mobile operating system in the US (~60%), the mobile market in Spain is dominated by Android (77%), and Sweden represents a country where both take about half the market each [5].

Context Matters!

Apart from the more or less static factors considered so far, situational context is a dynamic driver of user satisfaction that is just as important.

According to a 2018 survey [2], 79% of relaxed users felt that websites loaded mostly fast, whereas only 44% and 52% of the interrogated users stated they were generally satisfied with page speed when in a hurry or on the move, respectively. This means that it is not only important who the user is and when or from where the website is accessed, but also whether they are currently on the move, busy, or relaxing. And in the context of rising mobile traffic, this translates to a rise of impatient users: Because users on their desktop at home or in the office are likely to be more relaxed than mobile users on the subway or bus to the next meeting.

But being on the move is not the only cause for a feeling of urgency on the user side. Patience also decreases during sales events, for example when product availability is limited. About 50% of e-commerce users experienced a slowdown during such events according to Akamai [3]. This may be in part because of a change in user perception when under stress. But many online shops actually do become slower — or worse: unavailable — during peak hours as some simply cannot handle traffic spikes during sales events. And these are probably the worst times to keep users waiting for the page load.

The Psychology behind it

But when exactly does a delay become too long and when is it still acceptable?

According to a large-scale study conducted by Akamai in 2015 [3], 49% of all users expect websites to load within 2 seconds, 30% expect less than 1 second, and 18% even stated that they expect pages to load “instantly”. And this should not come as news: The impact of loading times on user attention and concentration has been researched as early as the 1960s [4] with the results illustrated in the table to the right. In a nutshell, loading times below 100 ms are perceived as instant and everything up to one second is still acceptable for the majority of users. When loading times exceed this threshold, however, users start thinking about something else — and will eventually drop out and do something else.

The main takeaway is that loading times need to stay below 1 second to keep users from leaving.

Wrapup

Many factors come into play, if we want to understand how website users perceive speed: There are differences among desktop and mobile users, between Android and iPhone users, and distinctions based on gender, age, location, or situational context. It appears to be generally valid, though, that expectations are highest for users who are young, surfing on mobile devices, or who are on the go. Seeing that the smartphone market is strong and growing, making page loads fast is likely to become an even greater challenge than today. But being fast might not even be enough as impatient users tend to perceive load time as slower than it actually is. This effect is amplified in situations that create urgency on the user side, for example through flash sales or limited-time offers.

As the bottom line, user expectations are heading towards instant page load times. And even though the details of perception may change depending on a number of factors, the user experience always suffers when page load times get worse.

What Comes Next

In our next blog post, we will take a look at existing research on the business impact of web performance. To this end, we will present an overview of relevant case studies and a synoptic discussion of their results. This will be the first step on our road towards understanding how exactly web page acceleration helps your business.