Re: Loosemore's law (was UKNM: Fast-loading sites)

[Stefan Magdalinski]

Duncan Clubb wrote:

> 

> > Steve Johnston wrote:

> > >

> > > -----Original Message-----

>

> > >From: Tomski [tomtomski [dot] com (mailto:tomtomski [dot] com)]

> > >

> > > >let's call it loosemore's law: intolerence of delay increases

> > > >proportionally with speed of connection....

> > >

> > > Hmmm..

> > >

> > > This makes the point so simply that I may just be inclined to adopt it.

> > > _If_ we can develop it a little.


<snip>


> > > Symptoms of intolerance... now there's a can of worms.....

> >

> > % of visitors who abandon your site before the download completes?

> >

> > poor but easy measure; put a reference to a 1x1 gif as the last element

> > in the html on your page, count the number of requests to it, relative

> > to the number of requests for the page itself.

> >

> > of course, this becomes increasingly inaccurate if the simple html is

> > full of requests to, say, 64K gifs, big flash documents etc.

> >

> 

> Unfortunately, this technique will only work if the 1x1 graphic is further

> down the list of requestable graphics than the user's browser is set to

> download concurrently.  Most Netscape browsers, for instance, are set by

> default to download 4 graphics at a time, so the 1x1 graphic must be 5th to be

> loaded or greater if it is to work as a measure.  And like most things, users


please re-read, paying particular attention to the phrase 'last element'


The point about large images further up the page, is that the users may

bail long after all the html has been loaded, but still a good 15

minutes before the flash animation has executed, and this measure is

therefore only suitable for certain types of pages.


> can and will change this figure in the configuration screens.  Also, they may

> have switched off graphics loading, in which case it won't work at all.

> I have always advised designers to limit (if possible) the number of graphics

> on a page to be 4 or less, precisely because of the above.  Designers,

> however, always ignore me.  Regardless, it seems appropriate for this list for

> me to claim this, in a smug and pompous manner, as Clubb's Law of Concurrent

> Graphic Download Limitiation.

> 

> In the spirit of trying to suggest a working solution, the only real way to

> measure user satisfaction or tolerance is to look at the number of impressions

> that any single user generates - the way the web works means that we have

> almost no tools at our disposal except to look at whether users ever bother

> loading more than one page.  A good stats package should be able to generate

> an average impressions per session figure, and in my humble, this is the best

> we can do - if users are intolerant, they won't bother going any further and

> the glue becomes unstuck.

> 

Really? I could tell you those stats for every site I've ever worked on. 


stefan


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