In distrubuting information, a one-second response time is needed to insure the user feels he or she is moving freely through an information space. Anything more than this and the user will notice a delay. A ten second response time or better is necessary if you wish the user to keep their attention on the task. Anything more than this and the user will turn to other tasks while waiting on the computer. What this means in simple terms, then, is a Web page should load in ten seconds or less or you will see a dramatic increase in bailout rates. Jakob Nielsen, probably the top web design expert, says "I have since become a reformed 'sinner' believing that fast response times are the most important design criterion for web pages." For users with a dialup modem, this means the page file size (including all graphics) should be 34KB or less. For broadband networks, you should shoot for the one second loading.

Studies have shown that if you stay within the 10 second limit for dialup users, your bailout rate (percent of users that don't wait for the page to load) is 7-10%. Above this the bailout rate quickly jumps to 25-30%. Most good web design editing programs (such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver) include, on the status bar, the current load time for a designated dialup speed. In addition to the high bailout rate, slow loading translates to the user as a reduced level of trust, and the user goes elsewhere.

In other words, you need to learn how to design effective pages that load fast. Most of my clients have a hard time understanding this. They often take a brochure they've done and want to build a Web page from it. It is loaded with graphics, lots of text, and fonts that don't do well on a Web page. Sometimes they use a font the user doesn't have and load it as a graphic, increasing the load time of the page. Then they wonder why their hit rate is so low. Sometimes the hit rate is there, but there is little response. Keep the page simple but target the need of the user and call for action. I like to use a main web page (Home page) that loads quickly and takes the user from a menu to whatever their specific need is. The call to action is another screen down. It is a lot easier for the user to click down a few screens staying involved than wait (frustrated) while a splash screen loads with animation and sound with little content. The pages themselves are almost like sound bytes, leading the user onward with short content bytes.

The actual load time will probably be more than ten seconds. There is an overhead associated with loading the page no matter how fast the page is designed to load. This will vary with the ISP, so choose your ISP carefully. The overhead includes the server throughput, the ISP/Internet connection, and the Internet speed.

There are proven ways to design good pages without sacrificing much quality.

• Minimize graphics. Reuse the graphics you do use, navigational icons, logos, arrows, and buttons.
• Keep your graphic files small, practicing saving graphics in different ways to see which is smaller while getting the quality you need.
• Be sure to put the height and width of the graphic in the load statement. This permits the rest of the page to continue loading while the graphic loads. The user can then read your text while the graphics load.
• Use flash animations, but use them sparingly. With a Flash, the entire first screen loading of the Flash is considered part of the page load. A GIF or JPG on that can take as much time as the graphic alone. Vector graphic Flash SWFs can take as little as 2-3 seconds, a better choice but still a good chunk of that 10 second load.
• Use standard fonts as much as possible. Using special fonts as graphic files for headlines can increase loading time
• Use Javascript and other high-level tools to get special effects. This page uses two frames with a Javascript menu at the left. It loads in 8 seconds at 56K.
• Use tables containing cells with background colors to add color variety to the page.

For our sharp-eyed web designers reading this, you'll notice some of our pages on our Web site take longer than the recommended ten seconds to load. We are constantly trying to develop methods to get the information we want onto the page without giving you a lot of load time. There are always compromises.

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