The situation has changed. The nature of people’s consumption of the Web is different now, especially with the take-up of mobile browsing in the last couple of years. (The change in the nature of consumption on that count in particular is why I would like to see results from the last year, especially if they’re segmented by device.)
People depend on the web more than they did, so they might be willing to wait for things longer—or even just be resigned to the web being slow. Or perhaps the increased number of providers means that they won’t be willing to wait as long. I don’t know.
It does seem to me that the precious few studies that there are from recent times haven’t shown as severe a drop-off as ones from ten years ago did. But then the ranges of the results are so far out of my experience in non-US countries that I don’t feel I can judge it.
What I do know is that I have had people complain of the age of the data I cited within the last couple of years, when citing the traditional examples of Amazon and Google. Their age and the indubitable ecosystem changes since their time make me a little leery of citing them now, because after due thought, I agree with the objections.
As I say, I want performance to be a commercially valuable factor, because it would justify one of my favourite two topics in IT. I just want us to be using solid, dependable studies of the matter so that we can prove our point without reasonable doubt, and justify expenditure on improving performance, rather than aged studies which are open to quibble.
> People depend on the web more than they did, so they might be willing to wait for things longer—or even just be resigned to the web being slow. Or perhaps the increased number of providers means that they won’t be willing to wait as long. I don’t know.
It is hard for me to disregard those big names and their claims, especially since I have no direct experience in working for any of those companies for me to say otherwise.
On the other hand, in my purely anecdotal world of friends, family, and colleagues, I have never seen/heard of such behaviors. I doubt any of them even realize what 100ms is, let alone abandon their purchase on Amazon because of that delay. Most people can't even react in 100ms to brake their cars.
I really have to wonder if we have causation vs correlation going on.
People depend on the web more than they did, so they might be willing to wait for things longer—or even just be resigned to the web being slow. Or perhaps the increased number of providers means that they won’t be willing to wait as long. I don’t know.
It does seem to me that the precious few studies that there are from recent times haven’t shown as severe a drop-off as ones from ten years ago did. But then the ranges of the results are so far out of my experience in non-US countries that I don’t feel I can judge it.
What I do know is that I have had people complain of the age of the data I cited within the last couple of years, when citing the traditional examples of Amazon and Google. Their age and the indubitable ecosystem changes since their time make me a little leery of citing them now, because after due thought, I agree with the objections.
As I say, I want performance to be a commercially valuable factor, because it would justify one of my favourite two topics in IT. I just want us to be using solid, dependable studies of the matter so that we can prove our point without reasonable doubt, and justify expenditure on improving performance, rather than aged studies which are open to quibble.