Site Speed and the Brand Experience

Larry Becker at Rimm-Kaufman Group has a great blog post over at the RKG Blog about site speed and web site effectiveness.  He sums it up to 4 simple words: your site speed matters.

So many online retailers, even Walmart.com have devoted a large part of the real estate on their home pages to the rotating flash images.  Do their customers really wait for the image to load so they can view the 3 or 4 messages the marketing department has drummed up?  Or, would it make more sense to go back to a simple, single-message .jpg.  You only have a second or two to get that point across before the customer clicks on your navigation links anyway.  You don’t see “flashy” images on some of the web’s top converting sites: Proflowers.com, Amazon.com, and ebay.com.

Some marketers like the flash imagery to extend the brand.  I like a fast loading page and better conversions!