Ever watch one of those horror shows that just makes you sick with apprehension? Suspense is one of the most unnerving things in the world, and that translates into your website.
Long load times are incredibly frustrating. You wait, and wait, and half the time you get fed up with waiting and click away, right? What makes you think any other user will be any different? They are in a hurry too.
Even more frustrating is a page that loads up OK and then you need to scroll down. And down, and down – I know I said put slow loading stuff below the fold, but not if what is above the fold isn’t captivating enough to hold my interest for more than ten seconds!
You really shouldn’t make your landing page go on and on forever. Surely you can find a way to split it up and link down? I find this a lot on sites that offer RSS feed – if I haven’t been there in a while, it needs to load up 257 stories – and it takes forever. Consider having a cap at 10, and letting a user click through to archives for stuff older than that.
Another thing about sites that have archived stories – there are a few that madden me. When you click on the link that should take you to the story, it bumps you back down the page to comments, and you have to scroll up. Even worse, every time you return to that tab, it has jumped back down the page to the comments section.
Sites like this cause unnecessary suspense and frustration, and may end up penalized as well, since Google calculates load time into the Quality Score it uses to determine placement. Consider testing out your site as if you were a visitor sometime – it might open your eyes to some design flaws!
The best landing or home page is a page that loads fast, isn’t longer then two full screens (the shorter the better) and has an uncluttered layout with distinct signposts to the rest of your site. Navigation is key – you don’t want your visitors getting lost in the clutter and finally climbing out a window just to escape.
Once you start paying attention to how your site and your visitors interact, you can make improvements to keep their attention and cut down on impatient click-aways.
Tags: archives, comments, load time, Quality Score