As we discussed before, users have high expectations with respect to the performance of websites; and when those expectations are not met users react in ways that clearly impact the outcome of key business metrics. There have been a variety of studies aimed and showing this reality. For example, a study made by Double Click and published in September, 2016, results like the following were reported.

User expectations

• 46% of consumers say that waiting for pages to load is what they dislike the most when browsing the mobile web
• 50% of people expects a page to load in less than 2 seconds
• About 53% of all mobile visits are abandoned if the page loads in more than 3 seconds

Load times

• 77% of mobile sites take longer than 10 seconds to load
• On 3G networks, the average time to load is 19 seconds
• On 4G networks, the average time to load is 10 seconds

Site structure

• The average mobile web page is 2.5MB in size!. This implies that the data alone takes 13 seconds to load on a 3G network (first view).
• The average mobile page makes 214 server requests; some of those take place simultaneously, while others are serialized.
• About half of all server requests come from ad-related calls

The same study reports results indicating the positive effects of better performance. Specifically, the study found that sites that load in 5 seconds vs. those loading in 19 seconds exhibit:

• 25% higher ad viewability
• 70% longer average sessions
• 35% lower bounce rates
• 2X greater mobile ad revenue

So…

These results paint a clear picture of the impact of bad performance on our sites: a dramatic loss of users, inability of delivering our content, and serious monetization challenges. I agree, we can’t afford bad performance.