The web favours the fast

Slow page loads lead to abandoned visits to sites. 90% of slow loading videos are never watched. The average page load on the web is 4.5 seconds and this is an age when compared to googles average of under a second. Google take page load so seriously that they are considering favouring sites that load fast over sites that load slow.

Googles lastest digest provides some interesting facts.

There is a hostin reveloution on the way, the days of old slow server are over.

If you top load you site with slow loading content google will loose interest in indexing your site.

When you have a faster loading site you increase visitors and increase sales.

We know this because we since we have moved our website from a slow service to a fast service visits have risen by 20% and contact forms and chats have increased by 15%. It's not a huge difference but it is a significant difference.

As sites get faster the patience of surfers on slow sites will diminish to 0%.

To read more on this subject. http://www.thinkwithgoogle.co.uk/quarterly/speed/the-google-gospel-of-speed-urs-hoelzle.html