Typical bounce time study?

@petewilliamsAug 19.2008

Hi guys,

I’ve read numerous articles over the years saying that you only have 4/8/30 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention before they leave your site.

However, I’m having real trouble finding a reputable study on the matter which I can link to.

Could anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Pete

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Full-stack Developer

@Declan1991Aug 21.2008 — #There isn't, because all users are different. [url=http://www.useit.com/alertbox/]Alert box[/url] has a few studies on it.

@petewilliamsauthorAug 22.2008 — #Yeah I realise all users are different, but you can still take average times. There are plenty of web-based studies so I'm sure this will have been looked at several times. Alertbox was my first thought but I'm not having much luck finding what I'm after. I'll keep looking.

Pete

@Declan1991Aug 22.2008 — #There is no hard and fast time that is an average, it depends on your user base, but in general with page load times, the slower the better. While users may be willing to wait 4 seconds, they will be happier if they only have to wait 2 seconds. Get some content, any content, to the user as quickly as possible so they know something is happening, the worst thing that you can see is a blank page. Don't have large header images, big Flash banners or any of that type of stuff.

How a particular page captures attention is individual to the page, what you probably need is to test with five or ten users.

@petewilliamsauthorAug 22.2008 — #Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself clear. I'm not talking about loading times - I completely agree that the faster a page loads the better. I always design my sites to load as fast as possible, cutting out unnecessary images and markup, optimising file sizes etc.

What I was referring to was what happens after the page has loaded. I've read articles stating that if a user doesn't find the information they're looking for within a few seconds of hitting a site, they'll go somewhere else. This is more about usability, layout, scannablility and content than load times.

The reason I was asking is that I'd like to convey the importance of having an easily scannable website to a potential client, and it would be nice to have some sort of 'reputable' study to back up my claims. I think some less web-savvy people don't fully grasp just how little time people spend on sites.

Again, I understand that there are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to this sort of thing, but it would just be nice to have [I]something[/I] to present to people if they want to find out more information.

Pete

Typical bounce time study?

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