Chapter 8
Designing for Speed
IN THIS CHAPTER
Discovering why site speed is so important
Understanding site speed, page speed, and more
Testing your site
Fixing your site
Using plug-ins and CDNs
In this chapter, you find out about the importance of speed — that is, page speed and site speed — and how fast your pages load in your site visitor’s browser.
The Importance of Speed
Why is speed important? Well, from a usability standpoint, it’s important because who likes to sit twiddling their thumbs waiting for web pages to load? In fact, in some cases, site visitors won’t wait; they’ll just move on to another site. That’s intuitive, perhaps (it just makes sense), but the idea is borne out by research, too. Research, quite simply, shows that the slower a website, the less likely visitors are to hang out and spend more time. One study found that if a page takes four seconds to load, 25 percent of visitors won’t bother sticking around.
The research also shows that faster sites make more ...
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