Page Load Time - Usability Perspective!

This is what Jakob Neilson, one of the Usability Guru tells in an interview, the standards for standard page load time. Interesting!

Can we match the page load speed of one second to e-commerce sites and Portals? I doubt!

Part of the interview excerpt:

"Do you reckon any of the traditional rules about usability need updating? The eight second rule for page loading, for example, with the rise of higher speed connections?

Well, the real rule is actually one second. There are three rules for response times and they don't really change as they are based on fundamental human characteristics.

The rules are; if it is faster than one tenth of a second, you don't feel like you are waiting at all. If it is more than one tenth of a second, you can tell you are waiting, but up to one second, it still feels like smooth navigation. Between one and ten seconds is the limit for your attention.

As you wait from one to ten seconds, your attention starts drifting off, and after ten seconds you are asking 'where is this thing?'. The recommendation is that it doesn't need to be one tenth of a second, but it should be faster than one second as it's about free flowing navigation. The only reason we used the eight second rule is that we couldn't get down to one second in the past.

If you go the best websites, like Google, that's what they do - they give you the page like that [clicks fingers]."