Speed As The Key To Success In The Web World

Marisa Meyer of Google says that the company has learned its short history that speed makes all the difference for the web consumer and how Google understood the power of speed. In a consumer research on search page design they found that those in the control group with 10 results stayed longer than those who asked 30 results. The control group's search, which displayed 10 results, took .4 of a second vs. those getting 30 results, took .9. Today, Google allows users to do a search that touches anywhere from 300-700 machines before it comes back to you in .05 of a second. Greg Linden confirms this to be true in early days of Amazon.com as well. Google says that they have applied this lesson in enhancing Google Maps as well resulting in demonstrably better results in usage.

Look at the contrasting but well thought out approach here : Most web companies want to keep people on the page, they want it to be "sticky", Google prefers that people spend less time, but do it more frequently. The cumulative volume is what builds the traffic and this comes from the consumer's positive experience on the site. Why speed matters?– because it it generates a steeper learning curve. YouTube’s steep growth is in a way owing to Google video’s slow process of uploading!! How I wish, yahoo and a host of Ajax proponents get this message – Yahoo mail’s new interface takes ages to launch!! Am sure that this is hurting Yahoo mail users and new users trying to evaluate Yahoo mail for regular usage.