Fast websites rank higher among customers, Google

One thing I've always recognized is the impatience of net surfers. I know it because I am one -- and have become even more impatient as the years and technology advances has brought us ever-faster loading times. What I used to tolerate in terms of page loading now will cause me to move on to another site if the one I aimed at is just a wee bit too slow to load.

I'm not alone. Here's a good read on the topic. In this article, it refers to an experiment conducted by Google in which they slowed down the delivery of search results. They found that increasing a page's loading time by less than half a second has a measurably negative impact on searchers. And, the author found, "the customer is highly, highly impatient. They scan a page like they scan a signpost as they're driving down a motorway. They hardly even read full sentences."

Which is why marketers who write the copy for their websites like they do an informational brochure -- heavy with graphics and large blocks of text -- are missing the opportunity. To take the article's author's metaphor a step further, it's like the highway department putting the "how to merge" section of the driver's manual on the sign next to the highway instead of the recognizable symbol for doing the same thing.