So why do people today leave a website? There may be various reasons, such as problems locating what they may be looking for. There is however, a high probability visitors leave a website because it seems too slow to load. In this particular post, I wish to focus my attention on the psychology of people, and the role it plays in our perception of performance and efficiency.
What On Earth Is “Too Slow”?
Do Websites “Feel” Slow?
A Moment does not fly if we are having fun.When can we experience fun? Obviously, it isn’t when we need to wait around for something to happen. Who loves to wait? These days, individuals wish immediate fulfillment and possess hardly any patience. Amazon provides one-day delivery service; a taxi should not take longer than 15 minutes to reach you.We have turned into a community in which waiting around is not accepted anymore-especially in the case of the online universe. Whenever we go to websites, if we do not get an immediate response, a competitor’s site is merely a mouse click away.
The issue when talking about website speed would be that the perception of speed is extremely subjective and very context specific. Whatever seems slow-moving to me may not feel slow, say, to my friend or my mother.Everyone has various expectations.I will talk more about this in a future post in this series to help you put together a definition of “too slow”.
Things that have been offered and given to the visitor, and did the information fulfill the user’s objectives?
Things that have been perceived by the visitor?
What would the visitor in reality expect?
Fulfillment
Visualize a scenario in which you go to a web page and a loading indicator slowly moves from 10% to 20%. You will count on it to take a while to strike 100%. In the event, the percentage suddenly starts to increase rapidly to 95% after which 100%, you will be pleased and delighted since your perception surpassed your expectations. On the other hand, in the event that the loading indicator increases more slowly than you anticipate, you will experience a less than enjoyable feeling.The bottom line is, website visitors tend to be pleased when their perception surpasses their expectations, and disappointed when the contrary occurs.
Perception
We have to acknowledge that the perception associated with a website speed is something that is very subjective.For instance, perception describes how quickly the visitor believes your website is, rather than how fast it actually is. More often than not, that is almost more important than the actual speed of your website.Usually, the perception of something being slow bears unfavorable confusion and so on. Speed, however, is associated with achieving success, producing less disappointment where the visitor is informed of advancements.Considering that your web site’s load time could be regarded as slow, you need to make sure that the content is presented as soon as possible.If there is any delay, the visitor is kept occupied and sidetracked, so the experience does not feel slow to them.There is a fantastic example of this that demonstrates the issue of perception. The Cape Town International airport receives lots of grievances from travellers that it takes to long to acquire their baggage. Rather than making the hard working airport terminal staff work even quicker to get the baggage out, the international airport chose to change the way travellers perceived the waiting time for you to pick up their baggage. They lengthened the distance from your arrival checkpoint to the baggage claims section. While the airport terminal staff were occupied shifting all the baggage to the baggage claims section, travellers were kept occupied by walking. The time for your baggage to be released hadn’t changed. Nevertheless, resulting from perceived efficiency, grievances began to drop significantly.
Expectations
Within the context involving performance, whenever servicing consumers, you need to deal with and value their expectations.
You can read the intro to the whole series here.
References:
http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/andy/blockhandouts/Queue%20Psychology.ppt
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting-in-line-is-torture.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Leave a Reply