You don’t have to be on the net for very long to realise that load time is an important factor in a website’s success. Internet users today are accustomed to lightning-fast internet. Where once ten seconds was an acceptable time for a page to load up on screen, these days even three seconds is possibly a little too long. A site with too many bells and whistles can drive users away before they see anything.

To be fair, the problem isn’t always at the site’s end. Often, the user is simply frustrated because they’re on an older machine than they’re used to, or they’re on a busy network. Sometimes the site’s servers are having a meltdown. Although the user may be aware of the possibility of these problems, this doesn’t mean they will be any more forgiving. A frustrated user is likely to click back onto the search pages regardless of who is at fault.

The best thing to do, obviously, is to ensure that your pages are swift to load no matter what happens. One of the things that should be done in any initial search engine optimisation campaign is to minimise page load time, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult about this. If your site is quite simple, with basic design and text-only content, then you’re in the clear. If you need other features on your pages, however, there will always be times when a page creeps toward a user’s screen with all the agility of an elderly sheep.

So what do you do if you have lots of images on your pages that absolutely have to be there? It might be tempting just to leave it, and hope that most users won’t experience a problem, but there are other ways of dealing with the situation. A recent study found that most users will click back only when they perceive a page is taking more than a couple of seconds to load. The key word here is ‘perceive’. The answer is distraction.

You can distract your users in a variety of ways. One of the simplest, used by many companies, is to present a basic message informing the user what is loading. The more interesting the description is, the more likely the user will stay, so the message ‘loading page’ is less likely to work than ‘loading Shopper’s fun land.’ A count down is also effective, as it informs the user on the process and gives them a rough estimate of how much longer it will be. A humorous message is likely to get your user on side, making them want to wait rather than just putting up with it.

Slow load times are a fact of life for your website, no matter how much effort you’ve put in to reducing its download size. The high ranking boosted by your SEO campaign is useless if your users bounce back before your site even loads. It can be well worth it to create a brief distraction.

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