Subsequent Small Amounts of "Slowness" Add Up
Previously we've spoken about what Visual Speed is and why it matters.
Here we'll look at a customer scenario where lots of small unnecessary delays to displaying page content starts to add up and eventual force the customer to leave without making a purchase.
If it's taking, say, 5 seconds to see your product images on your pages that maybe feels ok for the first product someone is browsing but chances are that the first page someone lands on is not going to be the only one they visit.
The Shoe Shopping Scenario
Imagine a situation where someone is looking for a new pair of shoes. They've found a link to your site, likely through a sponsored ad that you've paid good money for and they've landed on the first pair of shoes your site sells. In this case it took 5 seconds to load the main product image, this is your Visual Speed for this page visit. At this stage they're not overly bothered and it probably didn't negatively impact their opinion of how your site felt. For some really impatient people in a bit of a rush, it did, and they've already left your site. You just lost money on that ad click. In this case let's assume this is a relatively small amount of people that leave straight away. Bear in mind though, if your target market is in a big city always on the move this could be a lot more.
The customer has decided these shoes aren't for them but they're keen to explore further. The customer navigates to the "Summer Shoes" Product Listing Page. There's a grid of products here with images. The first few products in the grid load their images in around 5 seconds. Similar to the first page they landed on. However the impatience nerve we all have has just had it's first twitch. It's not the end game yet though.
The customer likes the look of a few products they see so they click on the first product in the grid to find out more. They've now landed on the product page for this pair of shoes. Again the product image takes around 5 seconds to become visible to them. It's become quite noticeable now to the customer that things are a little slow to load as in each of the 3 page visits this customer has made it's taken 5 seconds to load the product imagery, that's 15 seconds for those of you without a calculator.
The customer has decided this pair of shoes isn't for them either but the customers thumb is starting to get a little bit of trigger finger to hit that close button, as they've subconsciously established the slow waiting pattern and aren't sure they're committed to slow browsing. However, once again you're in luck, this particular customer has the patience of a saint and decides to go back to the product grid and continue on to their third product.
During the visit to the third product, the main product image still hasn't loaded after 5 seconds. The waiting time before was already pretty tedious but this is taking the biscuit. That trigger finger/thumb on the close button has now pulled and they've left your site. Now remember you just spent money to get them there through the sponsored ad.
In this case the product image for the third product hadn't actually been optimised and the file size for it was a whopping 5MB.
At the outset this might seem a bit extreme, but think about it further. Imagine you're on the go, maybe commuting into or out of work. There's lots happening around you. Signal may be patchy. You've got a limit on how much time you have left to stay on your phone before you get to where you are heading. A few extra seconds here, a few seconds there waiting on your website to show it's content starts to add up. That's alongside all this other stuff going on around you that you have to bear in mind. A few extra seconds displaying content on your website becomes a problem amplified.
Perforgo can help you monitor and diagnose large image file size issues and measure your websites Visual Speed.