I was using a load time checker and it said that my load time is 34 seconds with a 56k Modem ...is that bad? Its so difficult to make your page look good and keep it at a reasonable load time.

I try not to assume, but I have tell my self all the time that once your site reaches a certain point it doesn't matter. The people with slower connections realize they have slow connections and are going to know that a majority of the pages they visit are going to take a bit of time to load.

How fast do your pages load?

Just Curious,
Justyn

I've always read that studies show first-time visitors will just move on if the page doesn't load in less than 10 seconds (I think it was less than 9sec actually). Of course, you can drown in a river with a 1/2" avg. depth...so I guess it depends on how those surveys were conducted, what market you're in, etc.

From my own experience (I use 56k dial-up at about 45-51k most often, due to travel) I won't wait more than that for enough of the page to load so that I can start looking for whatever I came to do. So the page better load fast for me (unless I've got a real reason to wait)...or I'm gone.

My wild guess about farmers (I come from that background) is that, being in rural areas unserved by cable and/or telecom dsl, most use dial-up. On top of that, most don't get near 56k from their dial-up connection. So I'd want a much faster load time than 34sec. @ 56k if I was you. On the other hand, they may be more patient and/or have decided you are the best source for what they need when they come to your site. If either of those is the case, load time won't be an issue.

All I can tell you based on fact, is that my brother (who farms about 500 hundred acres in Ohio) has essentially stopped using internet because his 56k line tops out at about 24k because of rural telco line quality. Even when he does browse, he won't wait for anything to load. His partner (who farms about 1000 acres and lives in a different telco provider territory) is the same way.

So my best guess is that load time is important and yours is too long for your target audience.

Hope that helps.
Ed

I don't think that's bad at all, but it does depend on your target audience. I think my load time is a bit higher than yours (size depends on the product photos, which I change almost every day). My stats show most of my viewers have a screen resolution of 1024x768 (or higher), so I'm assuming they have new computers with nice size monitors and DSL. I would think there's not that many people out there using a 56K modem. Your site loads fast on my end (I use DSL).

I also agree that it depends on your target audience. Luckily you either already have, or can obtain this piece of info relatively easily thru Urchin 6. Our load time is about the same as yours and I used to obsess over trying to optimize code and images to shrink the page a bit. Once I started to get significant data in Urchin 6, I realized that fewer than 15 percent of the people browsing our site were doing so on a dialup connection.