We all know that fast sites and quick page loads are a good thing, but have you ever really considered how important? Do you think this is an issue from the past that technology and design have fixed? Seems plausible, but it’s not. With the growth of mobile browsing and the demand for instant gratification (meaning impatience), it’s still a big issue. Page loading speed is a major cause of site abandonment.

Google has been asking webmasters to keep sites fast for a better user experience and other things for a while, but there are also underlying reasons related to commerce and conversion that you should consider. So how slow is too slow? According to a recent study at the University of Nebraska, 2 seconds. If a page load takes longer than 2 seconds, it is intolerable, almost half of the visitors will leave. They often will go to a competitor and not come back if that competitor has faster page loads.

Some fun facts from KISSmetrics:

73% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load.

51% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that crashed, froze, or received an error

38% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that wasn’t available

If an e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a 1 second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year.

A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions

Check out the infographic from Online Graduate Programs for more information.