Websites face four-second cut-off

[Duncan Rounding]

I thought this was interesting from the BBC:
"...The time it took a site to appear on screen came second to high prices and shipping costs..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/pd...00/6131668.htm

[jont]

It begs the question on users perception of how long 4 seconds is - in reality I wager it is longer than they imagine.

Statistically a population group of only 1058 is very poor and only 75% of which comment on the 4 second rule.

From the survey companies website:

"Akamai solutions help you grow your online business, not your IT infrastructure. Our managed services give you instant global reach and consistent performance worldwide. Accelerate your Web-based applications and dynamically-generated content while providing fast and flawless media and software delivery."

Hmmmm ... they offer speedier "solutions" .... William Hill has already closed the books on what market they were in.

[Duncan Rounding]

It was that perception and the motivation behind the article that caught my eye. Akamai seem to have manufactured a good link from a high page ranking BBC website with it though.

[Darren B]

To Be Honest, It's American based anyway. I stopped taking note of them years ago.

They would not know a true statistical calculation if it hit them on the nose. I spent many years dealing with americans, brazilians, indians, turks to name but a few and i will be honest the Americans got so tied up in the statistics that they were unable to to see the true picture. This being the control group from which the data is drawn and there for validates the results.

And this artical just about sums up the BBC today. The quality of news is actually quite poor. Once they would have an editor that viewed what got shown now they slap anything up

I agree with Jont, $1.6m dollars of combined spend - how many billion a year is spent online? hardly a true statistical relationship is it.

Darren
ps Jont you beat to it today

[jont]

so tied up in the statistics

The report should release what the other options in the survey were (and also how the survery was conducted - open or leading questions) ... if you are wanting to focus a report towards a specific conclusion to favour your company services then the questions will be geared accordingly.

The report probably has some validity as we all know that slow loading pages are best avoided but has to be taken with a pinch of salt when conducted by a company offering a "solution" to the issues raised.

[Darren B]

Its a bit like have tick boxes, with tick which one best describes your experience,

[] V Poor [] Poor [] average []good [] v good

people will always pick average for a number of the questions because it is in the middle, never have an odd number of boxes. You need to force people to make a choice. It is a great way of manipulating statistics / answers.

I have done it many a time to persuade people to go down the road i want.

[jont]

[] V Poor [] Poor [] average []good [] v good

and conversely the order in which they are presented eg

[] v good []good [] average [] Poor [] V Poor

will create a different set of results.

Cunning blighters these stataticians

[Legends]

Statistics are a useful tool in company marketing and can be manipulated, contrived or even made up to promote your comapnies products or services, and i imagine most of us use statistic to sell.

Things like "95% of our goods are dilvered next day" or "30% of our business is from returning, happy customers" etc.

A great man once said - "90% of all statistics are made up"

Cheers

[Darren B]

Has anyone heard of the 80/20 rule

It can be applied to just about anything we do, although the figure might be 85/15 or 75/25 it is a great tool for broad based statistical calculations.

Example,
20% of profit should be spent on advertising (or turn over not sure which)

When calculating maximum production capacities, always calculate it to 80% this allows for down times and change over e.t.c.

Alot simpler and quicker but it is a great tool to use when you are trying to guess how much to spend or you can make e.t.c

Darren

[Mike Hughes]

The 80/20 rule I know is different:

- 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers.

- 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your products

etc.

Mike

[gabrielcrowe]

<disgruntled>
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/1352211

BBC steals all its cool news from slashdot and The Register. Stop reading the BBC's diluted versions and read full open discussions on these topics, with frank professionals giving their tuppeny worth. You'll never go back, I promise.

Additionally, this is claptrap. If someone wants something, then they'll wait. The amount of waiting corresponds to the rarity of the item in question. If your stock is readily available at a static price, then they'll go someplace else, if your site is pissy slow.

However, if you've competitive, and innovative, they will wait. The numbers from the survey are all for popular consumer goods from generic sources. making them the first category. Greedy, tech-less, holiday searching, smiley face downloading peons.
</disgruntled>

Slashdot poster:

If the hyper-caffeinated, sugar-popping, MTV-watching, blipvert-desensitized ADD kids of today can tolerate the glacially loading site known as MySpace, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the slightly older, credit card-holding demographic of online shoppers gladly tolerate more than 4 seconds on we sites, and do so without much prejudice.