Lately in some of my writing projects I’ve had to hunt down sources to demonstrate the importance of web page speed. Usually a quick Google search will pull up some pretty good ones, and I have a few others on file that I can refer to.
I thought I would put together a roundup of some of the ones I’ve been able to find. Web development bloggers, who are constantly promoting the importance of web page speed, should have these types of authoritative sources at their fingertips.
So consider this post the collective evidence for the importance of page speed. Posts are listed from oldest to newest.
- Google’s Marissa Mayer: Speed wins
Dan Farber, ZDNet (November 9, 2006) - Page Load Times vs Conversion Rates
Gabriel Svennerberg, In usability we trust (December 18, 2008) - Speed Matters
Jake Brutlag, Google Research Blog (June 23, 2009) - Bing and Google Agree: Slow Pages Lose Users
Brady Forrest, O’Reilly Radar (June 23, 2009) - Velocity and the Bottom Line
Steve Souders, O’Reilly Radar (July 1, 2009) - More on how web performance impacts revenue…
Jesse Robbins, O’Reilly Radar (October 1, 2009) - Business impact of high performance
Steve Souders, stevesouders.com (October 6, 2009) - How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line
Sean Work, KISSmetrics (April 28, 2011) - Speed Is A Killer – Why Decreasing Page Load Time Can Drastically Increase Conversions
Sherice Jacob, KISSmetrics (May 10, 2011) - Page load time – the online business killer
David Mercer, Business Insider (May 24, 2011)
If you know of any other good sources that discuss why page speed matters, add them to the comments and I’ll continually update this post. And keep in mind, these are sources that show why page speed matters not how to make pages faster.
So if you’re heading to a client meeting or want to discuss with your boss why it’s wrong to polyfill some CSS3 or HTML5 feature so it works in IE6/IE7/IE8, this might be a good way to show the potential effects of slowing down the slowest browser.
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