Intermission: Speed
Jens O. Meiert, June 10, 2009.
This entry is filed under Web Development, User Experience.
The size of the average web page has more than tripled since 2003. From 2003 to 2008 the average web page grew from 93.7 KB to over 312 KB, some 233 %. During the same five-year period, the number of objects in the average web page nearly doubled from 25.7 to 49.9 objects per page. Longer term statistics show that since 1995 the size of the average web page has increased by 22 times, and the number of objects per page has grown by 21.7 times. – King, Andrew: Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003. April 28, 2008.
[…]the average home page of the top 100 weblogs is around 934 KB in size, with nearly two-thirds of total page size due to images (61.3 %), 17.2 % due to scripts, 15.3 % due to HTML, and 5.9 % from CSS. The average top 100 blog home page had 63 images (including HTML and CSS images) and 9 external scripts. – King, Andrew: Average Top 100 Weblog Performance Survey. December 29, 2008.
These data haunt me ever since they got released. No matter if respective site owners enjoy wait and latency, speed is decisive for a positive user experience. Maybe that does mean something for businesses too …
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Comments
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On June 10, 2009, 9:13 CEST, Phil Nash said:
Jens,
I realise you do spend a lot of time talking about performance and squeezing the most out of your code by packing it into smaller sizes, but take a step back.
The average web page is 312KB and the average of the top 100 blogs is 934KB, 3 times as much. However they are the top 100 blogs, users visit them, read them and return. The size of the page is not putting them off.
Also, between 2003 and 2008, broadband penetration has increased dramatically (http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=10400), affording users’ download speeds of 10 or 20 times that of dial up. This clearly outstrips the increase in page size, negating the problem for those who have moved on to broadband (and anyone remaining on dial up expects to wait).
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On June 10, 2009, 9:29 CEST, Martin said:
There was a survey why people leave websites: 50% slow speed, 25% bad content, 25% bad design.
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On June 10, 2009, 15:12 CEST, Tim Kadlec said:
@Phil - You are correct in stating that more and more users are on higher-speed connections, and that is why the average page size has been able to increase without much of an uproar.
However, trying to get the page size down as much as possible, and optimizing the page load time is still very important and beneficial. Studies by Yahoo, Google, and Amazon have shown that by increasing page load time by as little as 100ms results in a decrease in conversions. In addition, a study done by Jupiter Research showed that among visitors to online retail sites, about 40% stated that a quick load time is “critical” to their loyalty.
So while increasing internet speeds allow us to throw more stuff into our sites, we still need to be very conscious about keeping our page load times as quick as possible.
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On June 10, 2009, 16:02 CEST, Dave said:
I have trouble when I try to base the importance of minimizing size/speed on our audience’s broadband penetration. Is over 90% of our audience really on broadband, or did the slow-speed users gradually stop coming back?
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On June 10, 2009, 17:56 CEST, Neovov said:
Nahh! Speed!
I live in a Country where a minister can tell “DSL lines are evil and useless”.
So, let‘s make some huge pages, with some huge images, and huge flashs. Dial-up users (soon, everone) will thanks us.
Of course, this comment is ironic. Speed is awesome.
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On June 10, 2009, 18:54 CEST, Ian W. Parker said:
I can see where Phil is coming from regarding the top 100 weblogs. They have a huge readership and can leverage that when adding more cruft to the site. However, I am not the average web surfer. There are many top weblogs and news sites that I absolutely refuse to read outside an RSS reader or my e-mail because they load too slow, have too much advertising, insist upon littering Flash objects or extraneous effects all over the site, etc.
Content is indeed king, but speed is very important to me, and with broadband at home and at the office, it becomes even more important. Just because I can download more data faster does not mean my level of acceptance for slow page loads goes up. In fact, it is the opposite. Since I have such fast connections, my personal demand that your site load even faster goes up as my connection speed increases.
Again, I’m not the average user, but I have not touched a portal page such as Yahoo!, MSN, or AOL in years because I cannot stand to wait for the pages to load, and when they do, there’s just too much going on. Even newspaper sites languish. I realize I’m not their target audience, but I do believe that the size of web pages has gotten a bit out of hand.
It may be time for large site designers to start asking themselves whether or not another item on the page is truly necessary, or whether yet another external JavaScript call is needed. Then again, with advertising being the primary revenue source for a lot of the big sites, I doubt that optimizing the pages themselves will ever be a concern. Those sites will just turn to the answer du jour. Cache it all!
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On June 13, 2009, 19:49 CEST, Jens Meiert said:
Phil, the way I see it is that average page size shouldn’t follow average internet connection speed. Imagine where the web would be if page size decreased, performance generally improved, yet connections got faster.
Martin, do you’ve got any pointer to this particular study? In any case, that’s exactly the problem – slowness and unresponsiveness are a big turn off, and that’s a lesson to be learned by some businesses.
Tim, thank you.
Dave, that’s a good point. And in fact it’s a bit challenging to measure things that are not happening …
Nicolas, sometimes one could in fact get tempted to exaggerate in the other direction … why don’t we all switch to BMP format for images.
Ian, right, you’re feeling with me. Latency sucks. We should be able to decide for ourselves when to waste time; no need – in fact, no right – for anyone else to do that for us.
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On June 18, 2009, 11:25 CEST, Martin said:
Google Analytics tells me 20% of my visitors are connected with dialup..
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On June 20, 2009, 8:02 CEST, Wolfgang said:
When you designs a web page should everyone also consider that everyone does not have the fastest internet. Dial-Up Users are nearly excluded from the internet. And why is the reason to have to arrange so big pages?
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On June 24, 2009, 15:12 CEST, Thorsten said:
If we are talking about the speed, there are statistics about the loading time useful. The internet is changing, maybe 5 years ago the google spider stopped indexing web pages after 250 kb or so. But I agree with the most comments that the internet connection is much faster and larger web pages are no problem for the most of us. But you should know your readers and target group well.
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On June 25, 2009, 17:26 CEST, Preklady said:
I would say that having an optimized site that provides lot of quality content together with great design without taking too much bandwith is a way to go. I think that if site is not able to be loaded quickly, many users will leave. Just my 2 cents.
All the best, Mike
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On August 28, 2009, 17:17 CEST, Azouz said:
It is like the computer industry, processor speed has dramatically increased during the last years and during the same period the average software minimal requirement (speed) has also greatly increased. They just adapt to what is available.
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On November 30, 2009, 2:01 CET, ansia said:
thank you very much for sharing this usefull information.
