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Speed is a bit of an obsession for most web users. They get upset about their Internet connections’ and mobile connections’ recognized slowness, and they always seem to be in search for the fastest internet connection.

Given this “the faster, the better” mentality, the consequences of slow-loading pages can be ominous for site owners. There are users who navigate away after waiting just a few seconds longer than they expected, for example, and it’s very likely that some of these dissatisfied users will tell others about the ‘unpleasant’ experience.

But for every second (or even every 1/10 second) site owners can shave off page load times, they can see huge returns. For example, Amazon.com increased its revenue by 1% for every 100 milliseconds of load time improvement. And AOL said its users in the top 10% of site speed viewed around 50% more pages than visitors in the bottom 10%.

Site optimization firm Strangeloop provided graphically organized statistics on just how long pages take to load, why they take as long as they do, and how long the average web user is willing to wait around for a website to load completely.

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