

Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic - quoderat
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html

======
pg
I heard Google also found that increasing speed increased users' perception of
the quality of the search results. The reason was that when the site was
faster, users did more searches. Naturally they found more stuff. But they
attributed the gain to Google's cleverness rather than the extra work they'd
done themselves.

~~~
prakash
I have spoken to tons of folks on websites they think are fast, websites they
would benchmark against -- in the majority of cases perception of fast loading
website triumphs an apples-to-apples comparison of _time taken to download &
render a page_. Perception plays a huge role when it comes to wining the mind
games in the users head regd. page download times.

~~~
gruseom
Can you give examples of how to make loading perceived as faster? All I know
is progress indicators.

~~~
narag
If I understood prakash's comment, the first way is actually making it faster,
either by generating it faster or by caching. I usually launch four or fives
sites at once. HN is the first to load, so I usually start browsing it instead
of the (slower) others.

Known tricks are explicit sizes for tables and images. The HTML file itself is
loaded fast so you can start reading while images are loading.

There's also the opposite method: preloading images so, once the needed items
are in the browser, the page _renders_ faster.

I wonder how it would work to preload the images for the initially visible
part of a page and leave for later the ones that you must scroll to see.

I've read recently about using sprites for the graphics: one big image with a
mosaic of little images used, then split using CSS. This trick reduces the
number of HTTP requests.

~~~
nfriedly
> I wonder how it would work to preload the images for the initially visible
> part of a page and leave for later the ones that you must scroll to see.

Yahoo has an open source js library that does exactly that:
<http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/imageloader/>

------
LostInTheWoods
Couldn't one come to another conclusion here? In fact several other
conclusions. For one, since users were getting more results on the page they
didn't need to go to a second results page, thus causing the drop-off in
traffic.

If you're going to come to some grand "Aha!" moment, you should define your
experiment. Were these the same users? on the same day? searching for the same
stuff? What browsers were they using? Did they have their windows maximized?
What was their screen size? ... and so on.

~~~
quoderat
Though I've never been able to find the results and complete study methodology
online (can anyone?), Mayer is a CS grad from Stanford, as well as head of the
UI team at Google. I'm guessing she and her group know what they are doing.

I'd be more than willing to bet that they controlled for these variables you
mention, else the test would be useless. Sure, it's right to be skeptical, but
they do this for a living.

Given Google's stake in having accurate data, they probably bothered to do it
correctly.

(And I am not usually a defender of Google.)

~~~
ojbyrne
Sure, but not necessarily to report it to the press correctly.

------
ardell
Another well-illustrated example of the fact that users don't know what they
want, you have to A/B Test it out of them.

~~~
zach
Too true. I like the optometrist who made me read tiny letters again and again
instead of asking "better like this... or like this?" Because even I can't
tell the difference at first sight.

------
harpastum
I think the magnitude of impact might be due to the search engine market.
Results of different search engines are usually indistinguishable (to most web
users), so the most important factors become design and speed. In other
markets the balance may be different.

I'm not saying that speed isn't important for everyone, but having that killer
feature, even if it slows down your site, might be what sets you apart from
your competitors.

------
prakash
Maybe PG should try this in kicking his HN habit, introduce throttling
features that will increase the time taken to render HN rather than focusing
on optimizations, I know it would help a lot of other folks as well ;-)

~~~
kirubakaran
I hope he doesn't make the site suck for everyone just to "help" the users who
seem to need baby-sitters. Suburbs suck for the same reason. I know you are
joking but I am really tired of all the Nanny State type stuff.

"Oh I am just doing this for your own good. You will thank me later." is one
of the most evil attitudes that I know. I am not able to express clearly why I
think so and why I feel so strongly[#] about it. May be it is coz I find it
patronizing. Also I find it extremely unhackerly.

[#] My mind is screaming obscenities and I am feeling pretty angry.

~~~
whatusername
even for kids? Or only for adults?

Also - there is something to be said for wisdom.

~~~
kirubakaran
I am sorry, I didn't understand what you've said. Can you please explain? (I
really tried hard to decrypt it btw)

~~~
whatusername
Sorry for being obscure. I was responding to your line: ""Oh I am just doing
this for your own good. You will thank me later." is one of the most evil
attitudes that I know."

I completely understand your objection to that phrase in a lot of adult
situations. (Safety fence after safety fence, stopping people from hurting
themselves with technical products, not letting you hack stuff). I get that
completely. Lowest Common Denominator design sucks.

What I was asking was whether you apply that thought accross the board.. My
mind particularly went to a Parent>Child relationship. Learning by experience
(ie - getting burnt) is a great thing, but sometimes you can/should learn from
others experience. Sometimes someone older/more experienced/with more wisdom
-- can stop you doing something for your own good.

Perhaps seat-belt laws may be a good example?

~~~
kirubakaran
Thanks :-)

Yeah, that is a totally different situation and I only have knowledge of one-
side (child's POV) so far. My thought on the topic at the moment is that
parents should definitely safe-guard children from life threatening and other
irreversibly catastrophic situations. Other situations will mostly be a
judgment call, erring on the side of freedom, rather than caution.

As Paul Buchheit said: advice = limited life experiences + over generalization

On seat belt law : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation>

BTW, I live in Washington state, which smothers you with its motherly laws.

~~~
whatusername
I live in Australia - we might be getting a bigger firewall than China's - I
know all about Nanny States.

When I have kids, one of my aims as a parent will be to try and err on the
side of freedom. (Although I can see that will be a hard choice to make at
points). Also - this was a good link I picked up off here/reddit recently:
<http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/>

------
electromagnetic
I can understand this. Walmart is the most painful website to browse on the
internet, because you go on usually looking for something or the price of
something and it takes what feels like an eternity to get _anywhere_.

~~~
pclark
you should try using GoDaddy.com

------
lallysingh
So, where does this fit into net neutrality? ISPs can certainly sell QoS
services to customers.

For some applications, this is important (e.g. gaming). For others, it could
be a nice competitive advantage. But then with more & more of the ATM frames
dedicated to QoS, that'll leave more contention (thusly, higher latency &
drop) for the rest.

I'm just worried about who's going to use these facts for what ends.

------
markup
It's pretty much a non-news -- I think everyone is aware of this -- but
backing it up with actual tests and data is _great_. Thanks for sharing the
post

~~~
teej
We had a discussion about this before, where I shared some rough stats from an
application I used to run. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=415809>

------
danohuiginn
so, why not load the first few results quickly, then fill in the rest later
through ajax? It'll take more than .5 seconds to eyeball the first ten
results.

------
cedsav
Sorry to bring back the table vs. css layout debate, but since Google use
tables for some parts of their layout, can we assume that this is because it
renders faster (and therefore makes more money for them)?

